A Monster's Prize & A Victor's Mask
by themirrorminder.372259
Summary: There is no Capitol, but The Hunger Games still exist. Each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some districts have extra incentives. {the one where Cato wins, and it looks like Clove is his prize} {the one where Katniss volunteers, just not for her sister} Rating changed to M as of Chapter 3!
1. Chapter 1: how to capture a prize

**_Disclaimer:_** ** _Suzanne Collins_** ** _owns Hunger Games and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_**

* * *

 _ **Summary: There is no Capitol, but The Hunger Games still exist. Each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some Districts have extra incentives. (OR: the one where Cato wins, and Clove is his prize)**_

* * *

 **A Monster's Prize & A Victor's Mask**

* * *

 **Chapter 1:**

 _how to capture a prize_

* * *

Maceria Steinn had been wholly content to lounge away the warm afternoon on her patio, with sangrias and margaritas chasing each other down her throat. So, how did she end up off her chaise, and instead in her air-conditioned parlor with tanning oil plating her skin to her silk house robe? Why is she half standing and half freezing in front of unwanted visitors?

The answer is making annoying muffled protests on her venetian floor.

In front of Maceria, her son's malicious minions have chained down an infamous battered young woman. Maceria notes blood oozing from various wounds on the little heathen who is being forced to her knees, and so gestures to the nearest servant to _do something about it_ before stray cruor ruins her imported tiles. The attendant scurries away to acquire a towel, and she is reminded of the stuttering servant boy from earlier who had hesitantly interrupted her blissfully relaxed, pleasantly buzzed state with a _"M-my lady, y-you've guests."_

She should have ignored the blundering boy.

Speaking of blundering boys, Marvel, her son's sandy-haired best friend, shakes the metal chains leashing down the girl. The bound brat snarls behind the cloth wrapped around her mouth. The girl then turns her unattractive scowl towards Maceria, who is curious about this girl who she's heard so much about over the years and yet never deigned to see.

 _'_ _Your eyes are the colour of dirt,'_ Maceria thinks derisively. _'How very fitting, given where you come from'_.

Upon further inspection, there is a glassy glaze tinging the girl's angry eyes. Suddenly, Maceria understands how such a usually incompetent band of boys were able to subdue their prey. They would have returned worse than a little banged up had they not resorted to drugging the girl.

In truth, Maceria is irritated that she was interrupted for this farce. She wants nothing more than to return to her vodka and veranda. So she pastes on a practiced smile, and invites (commands) the de facto leader of the group to speak. "Marvel," she begins in a tone too saccharine, "I believe you boys were aware that she should be delivered to my son's newly won home, _not_ _mine._ "

Marvel, the only one of her son's nauseatingly sycophantic followers that she can sometimes tolerate (mostly just because he's so nice to look at), has the good sense to appear chastised as he responds. "We couldn't get into his new house yet… since… well… since he hasn't technically won yet." As if to avoid offense, he rushes to add on, "even though we all know he will win, obviously, but still... so we don't know where to keep her for him. After he took down that District 9 dude, the only one who was any actual competition, we knew she was going to run if we didn't, well, stop her... and, well, he told us to… he told us to make sure she didn't run."

Maceria nods patiently at Marvel' babbling, keeping her expression placid. It is a good thing the boy has his looks and body, since he is clearly lacking in the head. He's quite lucky the little hellion didn't damage his pretty face (by his limp, it looks like only his leg was a casualty of her defiance). Speaking of, Maceria turns her appraising eyes back to the girl.

' _Passably pretty'_ , she concludes from what little she can appreciate behind the dried sweat, strands of blood, and layer of grime. The girl has a misleadingly delicate face with fine cheek bones and big eyes, but she looks shorter than expected. Moreover, the girl is wrapped up thoroughly in chains and rope ( _just like she imagines offerings to gods once were_ ). So much so, that Maceria can't make out the girl's form. _'You must be fit and strong, given what I've heard of your… reputation from the Training Centre.'_

Maceria wonders if that is the appeal of the girl to her brutally beautiful son: the challenge of taming the knife-throwing hellion with an angelic face, crude tongue, and skilled hands. In time with her thoughts, the girl twists in a manner that is almost successful at loosening the group's hold on the restraints, but one of her son's lackeys (the one with horrifically orange hair, a newly bruised neck, and recent black eye) tightens the chain that he holds and jeers something at his prisoner.

 _'_ _I wonder if I should switch over to red instead of white for my next sangria.'_ The higher ethanol concentration beckons her, and momentarily distracts her, so she doesn't hear exactly what the nameless lackey sneers to their petulant prisoner. It was likely quite lurid, given both the fool's leer at the girl's body and Marvel's horrified expression. The latter is clearly shocked of the other boy's crassness in front of the woman who is not only Cato's mother but the _Mayor's_ daughter. Marvel chastises the graceless lackey accordingly ( _"You idiot, you can't say things like that in front of the Mayor's daughter. Are you entirely classless? Don't you–"_ ).

Maceria has had enough. She grows more and more exasperated at the idiocy of the fools her son surrounds himself with, and cuts off Marvel's reprimand. "You may deposit her in one of the guest rooms in my West Wing for now." She concedes. "Lead them to it," she instructs to the same servant boy who had dared disturb her afternoon. He nods repeatedly, eager to please her, and begins to guide the group away. She figures Marvel's attempt at grace (and pleasingly tight shirt) earns them the warning that she tosses over her shoulder on her way back to her haven. "Boys, do be careful about leaving any visible marks, Cato will be… quite wroth if his prize is damaged."

She continues walking towards her afternoon plans. She doesn't need to be facing the boys to know that cold claws up their spines at the thought of her son's wrath. She hears the girl, _Clove,_ being forcibly dragged towards the stairs leading to the second floor of the West Wing. Maceria wonders how long it will take for Cato to destroy the wretch. She wonders what her son has planned for his little obsession, and her stomach inadvertently rolls when she recalls just how… _creative_ Cato has been with the girl in the past.

 _'_ _Red_.' She decides, wondering why she even bothered with white in the first place.

* * *

 _{ Maceria: rubble, debris, ruins }_

* * *

 **End of Chapter 1**

* * *

 **Review pretty please :) What do you think of Maceria? Why do you think I chose that name for Cato's mother? What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc?**

* * *

 **Preview of Chapter 2: how to breed monsters**

Cato isn't really her son anymore anyways. He's the son her mother never gave her father.

...

"There are plenty of ways to break little girls, Cato. Explore your options."

...

(she bred a monster, she isn't surprised)

...

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him... and wonders how much of his grandson's cruelty was born from his own relentless training of the boy, versus how much was due to his daughter's indifference... It is cruelty that is unmatched; he remembers every detail of the gory report given by ... of what horrors the boy was capable of at just 15 years old (of what he did to the girl he now wants to own).

* * *

 **AN: So this story has been sitting half finished on my computer for a long time, and I've decided to try to attempt to get this out. For fans of my other fics, I apologize for chasing plot bunnies instead of finishing my other stories that have been uncompleted for far too long (*authors hides behind her hands*). But, hopefully, some of you are Clato fans and will not be too upset? *sweat drops***


	2. Chapter 2: how to breed monsters

**_Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Hunger Games and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_**

* * *

 ** _Summary: There is no Capitol, but The Hunger Games still exist. Each district allows up to one champion a year to compete. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some districts have extra incentives. {OR: the one where Cato wins, and Clove is his prize}_**

* * *

 ** _Story so far: Cato Steinn's mother, Maceria, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Marvel) have delivered Cato's prize to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Cato's (and thus Maceria's) life for longer than she'd like to admit._**

* * *

 **A Monster's Prize & A Victor's Mask**

* * *

 **Chapter 2:**

 _how to breed monsters_

* * *

Maceria Steinn had been blessed with beauty, or so she'd been told. She'd been blessed with brains too, but was smart enough to only let people see her smiles. She grew up in luxury, lavished with attention in one of the sprawling manors comprising the Victor's Village in District 2. Her father had been the well-loved champion of the 30th Hunger Games, continuing the legacy of his father and grandfather before him. (She's always thought "Hunger" Games was a strange name for an inter-district competition where the strongest warriors competed for glory, and that "tribute" was an odd designation for those volunteers, but that is a contemplation for another time.)

She is gorgeous, with the renowned Steinn thick auburn curls and hazel eyes that naturally favour gold over brown. She is rich, through birth and through marriage. But, more than her beauty and her bank account, she is _smart._ She is intelligent in a dangerous, manipulating kind of way. Only her father knows this, and allows it solely because she is as obedient to him as her mother was. Actually, no, that isn't entirely true. One other person knew she was capable of independent thought, and that was Maceria's only friend (unlike the other sheep whose daily bleating that she endured). Bea was her name, Dr. Bea Tray. Bear was a few years her senior, and she was smart too.

At only age 21, Bea became the youngest physician to ever be registered in District 2.

At age 21, Maceria became a widow.

* * *

 **}X-X-X{**

* * *

18-year-old Maceria is unsurprised when her father summons her to his solar, and formally commands her to seduce 28-year-old Caron Dejanira, the Victor of the 52nd Hunger Games, into sliding a ring onto her finger. She does not put up a fuss, despite their age gap and his origins, because she paid close attention to this year's Games. She easily inferred from how he handled his tasks that Caron is mostly brawn, negligible brain, and entirely malleable. Bea on the other hand, doesn't understand Tywin Steinn's instructions at first, and is very vocal about it; the fact that District 2 East's princess is being given to an unpopular Victor.

Unpopular in the East (the part of District 2 that actually mattered), because even though Caron is a Victor, he is from District 2 _West_.

District 2 East has a longstanding hierarchy built on names and tradition, and Caron is nothing but a single child from a deceased single mother from the lower middle class of 2 West. In Bea's opinion, Caron is a nobody who likely fancies himself one of the elite now that he is the first non-East Victor from District 2. And so, Bea doesn't understand why Maceria's well-respected, well-bred father would even consider sullying his daughter and his line with the likes of Caron, who she considers to be only a marginally better option for a spouse than the grubby peasants and putrid urchins from the slums of District 2 South.

Maceria knows her father's mind all too well, and figures that there is a greater purpose to his selection of Caron. Normally she would work it out, but she needs to invest her mental energy towards the manipulations and scheming that will be required in snaring the doe-eyed fool. Maceria's father raised her to be obedient without question, so honestly, it would not matter even if he had no ulterior purpose to his instruction.

She owes him a debt, and thus her unfaltering obedience is expected, even though her loyalty alone will never be enough to repay him.

* * *

Tywin Steinn wins the 30th Hunger Games and then marries a girl with impeccable breeding and a good, old name from 2 East.

Unfortunately, Maceria's mother was unable to conceive Tywin a son. Only stillborn after stillborn, miscarriage after miscarriage, and a girl.

Tywin was the only child of a line of male Victors. So, by the etiquette of 2 East, Tywin had every reason to abandon his wife and daughter, and wed another more fertile bride instead. Because his family's legacy demanded a son, no one who mattered would fault him for abandoning a barren wife.

Tywin did not.

And so, Maceria feels she owes her obedience to her father, a man who stayed true to her mother, even when the woman could not bear him a Victor - could not bear a son for him to mold. Tywin may be a cold, unfeeling man, but he is also a man who did not disown her, an action which would have left her with no more to her name that the rats of Southside.

Of course, she understands it was not love that kept Tywin Steinn true.

His marriage to his mother had always been political – her mother's family had many positioned in the District 2 Council, and had spawned over three Mayors (including Maceria's great grandfather). Moreover, his loyalty to a barren woman incapable of giving him a son to continue his legacy further endeared him to all of the District 2 populace, regardless of region. Wasn't Tywin Steinn _kind_. Wasn't Tywin Steinn _noble_. Wasn't Tywin Steinn _magnanimous_.

When Maceria is eight years old, her mother dies in in childbirth, moments after the woman had delivered yet another stillborn babe.

Maceria initially suspects it was not the accident her father so convincingly mourned over, but Bea had been an apprentice at the time, and told her that her mother's passing was natural. "Stress on her body from another failed birth," according to Bea.

* * *

It doesn't take Maceria nor Bea long to realize the advantages of marrying Caron Dejanira from the West when the next election announces that all citizen's votes will count as a whole vote, unlike before where any non-East District 2 citizen only had a partial vote.

Tywin Steinn, who is not only a Victor, but the grandson-in-law of a previous mayor, and father-in-law to the only ever non-East Victor, wins the election by a landslide.

* * *

Caron is tall with straight blonde hair, a mason's broad shoulders leading to strong arms, and topped off with beautiful dark blue eyes. _At least he is handsome,_ she thinks, as she orchestrates some happenstance meetings, uses her voice and her beauty to lure him into conversation and kisses, and forces a light sheen of happy tears into her eyes when he proposes to her.

* * *

Maceria is almost disbelieving of the sheer gullibility of her besotted fool of a husband. Caron is naïve. He is overly trusting. He tells awful jokes that she forces herself to laugh at. He is always chasing her about asking if he can do anything else for her. He shortens her name to a nickname that she only lets Bea call her. He accommodates her request to keep her maiden name. He is from West. He is from a no-name family, and he grew up not knowing wealth.

But he is _kind_.

* * *

Maceria, at 19 years of age, locks herself in one of the many bathrooms of her husband's manor.

Her stomach cramps uncontrollably. She has tears running down her face and blood running down between her legs, the red a burning contrast to her ivory thighs. She collapses onto the floor, and the stark cold of the marble sticks to her sweat-drenched palms.

Maceria is only _19 years old_ and she is losing her first child.

Her thoughts are racing with everything she needs to do, with everything she should be doing instead of hiding in this godforsaken bathroom. She needs to call Bea. She needs to cover this up somehow. She needs to make sure her father never hears of this. (What will he do to her, if he suspects her womb is just as inhospitable as her mother's was? What will he do to her, if he even begins to suspect that she is incapable of continuing his legacy?)

Her stomach twists, and she throws her face over the toilet before puking.

Oh god, what will her _husband_ do to her?

Caron has never raised a hand to her before, never even raised his _voice_ to her before. But that was before she lost his chid. He is still as strong as the day he won his Games, he could easily beat her to within a breath of her life, and then drag her into his bed and plow into her until another child fills her womb to make up for the one who is currently bleeding out of her.

Maceria starts shaking uncontrollably. She does not want to die on this icy floor in a house that isn't hers. She does not want to be beaten by a homicidal husband. She just wants a son to give to her father - a son to pay her debt so that she can finally be free of her father's tyranny.

She feels thick arms come around her shoulders, and she wonders if her _naïve, besotted, overly trusting fool of a husband_ will strangle her. (He isn't stupid enough to not know what the blood on the floor means. _'Oh god, oh god, I'm going to die here.'_ )

Caron doesn't strangle her. Instead he pulls her to him, holds her close but not too tight, not with the grip an angry man should have.

"We'll be okay Macy. We'll get through this. Shhh, it will all be okay."

His words aren't sarcastic. They aren't bitter or tinged with threat. They are _kind_.

She immediately turns in his hold, then buries her face into the crook of his neck, and clutches the fabric over his chest as she sobs. And sobs. And sobs. And while she continues to sob, Caron continues to whisper comforting things in a soothing voice.

Then he begins to get up, taking her with him.

In that moment Maceria feels like such a fool. He tricked her, she knows, and she expects to be hauled into his bed, forced into giving him an heir on a bed lined with the blood of her dying child. Or perhaps he would rather drag her to the nearest window. After all, the stage is already half-set for a grieving woman taking her life after an unfortunate miscarriage.

Instead she is slowly carried into a large porcelain tub, where Caron takes a soft wet towel and gently washes away the blood, the tears, and the sweat off of her. And when he seems sure that she is bleeding no more, he gently lifts her once more. He lays her carefully on their bed, and he does nothing more than hold her as she drifts off to sleep.

* * *

He is kind.

Caron stays kind, even when she loses two others.

She asks him, once, why he stays with her. (For all her and Bea's blustering about his breeding, Victor's have pocket books that attract any woman easily.)

He looks baffled at her question, then almost offended, but finally understanding when he replies. "Oh Macy. I married you because I love you, not for an heir. If we are lucky enough to have a child, then I'll be overjoyed. And if we never can, I will still be overjoyed because I will get to spend the rest of my life with you."

 _'_ _Fool.'_ She thinks, eyes wet from his honesty, her heart becoming just another bit softer towards the man she married.

* * *

When Macy is 8 months pregnant, the furthest she has ever been, she does not pray for a son to give her father. She does not pray for a son to buy her freedom.

Instead she prays for a daughter to give her husband. A girl with his kind eyes and his honest smile. She prays for a daughter that they can raise together.

* * *

Macy is drenched in sweat when she first hears the cries of her child.

"It's a boy!" Bea exclaims from the foot of the bed, as she and her nurses go about dealing with the child and the afterbirth.

From Macy's side, she hears the familiar voice of her husband. "You'll be such a great mother." Caron says, with a calming voice as he brushes the bangs plastered over her eyes, and gently kisses her sweat-stained forehead. His hand is still clasped in hers, where it has steadily stayed for every second of the past hours of painful labour. She looks into his cobalt eyes, that are so deep and so happy and so warm and so thankful and so _loving._ "What would you like to name him?" He asks her. (They hadn't talked about names at her request, her being too terrified to name a child she was liable to lose.)

She has no doubt Tywin is expecting that his grandson - the heir to the Steinn legacy - be named after him. Perhaps Tyrion, or Tytos, or Tyrell. But she does not want her son to be her father. She does not want her son to be a Victor or a debt payment. In that moment, she wants her son to be kind and to be honest.

She looks directly into her husband's eyes when she names their son after him.

* * *

When Cato Dejanira-Steinn spends his first night at home, it is in a golden crib. Macy watches over him as he breathes his small breaths. She feels safe, encased in Caron's strong arms as they both stand faithfully by the crib until dawn.

She decides she wouldn't mind staying like this, in this moment, for the rest of her life.

* * *

Caron is naïve, overly trusting, ill-bred.

Caron will make her son weak.

Or at least, that is what Tywin warns, when she is once more summoned to his solar (in the house where she grew up, but not the home she now has with her husband and son in another plot of Victor's Village). Tywin, with the same unflinching tone as before, informs Macy that Caron needs to be disposed of.

Macy panics. She cannot disobey her father, but she cannot bring herself to harm her husband, to rob Cato of his father. Caron is kind, the only infallible kindness she has ever known, and _he does not deserve to die._

She thinks quickly.

"I have an heir, so I'll remove him if that's what you wish," she lies. "But perhaps I should secure a spare first?"

She watches her father consider the reasoning with bated breath, while she tries to keep her expression placid, while she tries to think of another way to buy her husband time in case her father rejects this one.

"A spare," Tywin nods, "not necessary, but not invaluable if you can birth another boy. Provide a spare and then get rid of your husband."

"Yes, father" she says, while debating if she cares enough for Caron to run away with him. (Tywin would hunt them until the ends of the earth, but perhaps if she left Cato she could keep Caron?)

* * *

Macy grew up with servants and staff at her beck and call, so it is a novel experience for her to have so few. Caron hires a cook and a cleaner, who do their duties every morning and then allow the small family privacy for the rest of the day. During Cato's early months, it was her and her husband who woke up to see to his needs. They were raising him together, as a family. And Macy finds she likes it - having a _home_.

* * *

Any time that Caron is not catering to her or playing with their son, Caron spends by volunteering as a trainer for future Hunger Game tributes. There is a 48-hour long exposition today at the Training Centre. Macy is 8 months along in her second promising pregnancy and Cato is just over a year old. Some of Caron's favourite students are competing. He promised them he would attend.

Pregnant women and infants are not allowed in the Training Centres.

"I swear to you, the minute you call for me, I will be back by your side." He promises.

And she believes him, because Caron never lies to her.

He jokingly says he can bring Cato along with him, to give her and Bea a girl's night, as he tickles the infant's stomach. Baby Cato is lying supine on a fluffy blanket, squealing in delight and clapping at his father, who bends down to blow a raspberry onto his son's stomach. "Dah!" Cato sings. "Cato!" Caron sings back. Macy can't hold back her smile as she looks upon the antics of her two silly boys.

"How about you stay with Mommy and Aunt Bea, and your future little sibling? Would you like that better, Cato?" She coos at her son while playfully nudging her husband out of the way and ticking the boy's feet. Cato just squeals again in delight, smiling even wider. "Mah! Mah! Mah!"

"Such a Mamma's boy," Her husband accuses impishly, while sighing and rolling his eyes good-naturedly. He lifts Cato up to the sky, and spins him round and round. Macy laughs at Cato's glee and uninhibited wonder. "Dah! Fy!" Her son yelps with joy. "Fy! Fy! Fy!"

The perfect moment is broken when they hear a knock at the closest door. Caron tries to set his son down, but Cato petulantly clings to his father's legs. Her son's adorable pouting just serves to widen Macy's smile and she gently disentangles the boy's grip from Caron's training pants. Her husband thanks her with a wide smile. His arms are warm as he envelops her in a strong hug before giving her a kiss that takes her breath away. He rubs his hand over her protruding stomach, smiles even wider when he feels a kick. He reminds her again that he is just a call away if he is needed, before going to answer the persistent knocking.

Caron leaves for the exposition, Bea enters, and Macy continues smiling at her goofball of a son, who is now demanding his pregnant mother let him "fy" the way his father does.

Bea picks up Cato and takes him upstairs to get Cato ready for some time outside. "Once this little rascal is set to go outside, I'll make us some tea Macy!" Bea exclaims over her shoulder as she starts up the stairs.

Macy's smile falls the moment Bea is on the upper floor. Macy doesn't think she is capable of leaving Cato anymore, and is completely sure that Caron will refuse to abandon his son. However, as she is constantly reminded by her growing stomach, she is running out of time to figure out a way to save her husband from her father.

* * *

Macy makes it to the birthing bed again, but this time a month too early and without Caron by her side.

She screams for him, begs Bea to call her husband from his stupid exposition, because something feels _wrong_ this time and she _needs_ him. She needs him here, holding her hand and telling her it will be all right because this time she is growing increasing frightened with each hour that passes; she is scared that she will die in a bed of blood the same way her mother did.

She hasn't seen her husband since they shared breakfast this morning, before he left for the exposition. She had entered labour ten hours ago, with Bea as the sole witness.

 _'_ _Where are you?!'_ She is terrified, not just for this child who refuses to come out, but for a husband who is too kind, too understanding of her fears, to have ever willingly left her to this alone if he'd had another choice.

Again, a contraction yields pain without progression, and Macy knows for certain that her husband must be dead, and she will soon follow.

She thinks of Cato, her sweet little boy who still clings to her skirts, her darling son who laughs every time he tries to escape a bath.

Another contraction rips through her and she screams.

She is dying. And Cato will be an orphan, left in the severe hands of her ambitious father.

* * *

Macy is drenched in sweat, but there are no cries of a child this time.

"Stillborn." Bea says, with more pity than kindness.

* * *

When she finally sees Caron again, a few hours later, he is spewing apologies and excuses.

(An exposition structure had collapsed. He helped extract the younger students who were stuck underneath, close to dying. No one had told him. No one had called him or else he would have been right by her side.)

The truth is that even if _he_ had been the one that was dying, he should have crawled through the damned streets to be there for her. He should have _known._ He should have been there holding her when she sobbed after giving birth to a corpse.

Caron is kind, kind enough to help others instead of protecting her.

Caron is kind, but Caron wasn't there.

Caron has made her dependant on him.

 _Caron has made her weak._

Maceria will never forgive him for it.

* * *

Caron collapses in the middle of the Training Centre, urged to go help rebuild one of their structures by his wife only three days after news of his stillborn daughter. Maceria sells her part as the grieving widow well.

Bea does the autopsy, so on paper it says that Caron died of heart stress. (Of course that's not entirely false, but not entirely true either. Bea is loyal enough to keep the relevant tidbits out of the report.)

"Good riddance," Bea exclaims as the duo share a bottle of champagne after Caron's funeral. "A shame that Cato has to share blood with the ill-bred fool, but soon no one will remember that." Maceria takes a large gulp, draining the flute of liquor as Bea continues her tirade. "At least Cato won't have to suffer the fool as he grows…"

Bea's words fade as Maceria remembers the way Caron would playfully spin her son in his arms. She refills her glass. Cato still asks for his _Dah_ ; the stupid brat doesn't realize he no longer has a father. To be frank, she doubts he has much of a mother anymore either. Cato is an orphan in all the ways that matter now.

"... right, Macy?"

Maceria looks down at her glass, which is empty again. She reaches for the bottle when she responds. "Don't call me that anymore."

* * *

Even if Caron's death was in any way suspicious, which it very much is (a man in peak health dying from heart issues, a widow granted full control over all of her deceased husband's Victor Funds); no one would dare whisper a word against the daughter of District 2's Mayor. And honestly, the people who matter, the people from the East, well they don't spare a second glance at a dead man from 2 West.

Likewise, no one says anything when the hyphenated last name of her son is shortened to reflect only her family's name.

The last of Caron's stain on her son is gone.

(She drinks herself to the point of blacking out on the day her father tells her to erase Cato's last tether to his father.)

* * *

Cato Steinn is trained by Tywin Steinn mercilessly.

Cato starts walking at two years old, and is holding weapons by three.

Maceria supposes she should help the boy, that she should care enough to spare him from the brutal upbringing Tywin was never able to give to a son of his own. But, she knows that giving Cato to Tywin has finally fulfilled her debt to the man.

 **Cato isn't really her son anymore anyways. He's the son her mother never gave her father.**

(Even more, Cato is the reason Caron is dead. If she had just been able to leave the little leech, she and Caron could have run away together. She and Caron and their daughter could have lived happily together far away from here while Tywin fawned over his heir in District 2. And if Cato had just been a girl or even stillborn, she could have at least had Caron for longer. She would have had time to forgive him, to talk herself out of her anger, to not poison the only honest kindness she had ever known.)

Maceria has a large wine cellar installed in the basement of the manor. She's the only occupant now. Cato has a few rooms for show, but as the boy grows he spends more and more nights with his grandfather. Maceria spends her time drinking instead of eating, shopping with her dead husband's money, hiring staff to cook for Cato when he deigns to stay with her, and being waited on by servants who she hires to maintain the house. (It is a house now, it will never be a home again).

* * *

Maceria cannot bring herself to love her son, who continues to grow further away from her and further away from the person his father would have wanted him to be.

Cato is the reason Caron is dead. And yet, Cato is the only piece of her husband that she has left. The latter fact was what made her remove the pillow from its position over a sleeping two-year-old Cato's face, when she had almost attempted to suffocate him. Not even Bea knew about that. Or about the other four times she almost suffocated her son when he was a toddler, only to be stopped only by the ghost of her husband.

Cato has straight blonde hair and dark blue eyes.

She hates his existence, and yet eagerly awaits for him to grow into his father's face.

Her inner conflict is maddening, so she resolves to pursue with indifference.

There are no more attempts at suffocation. But there are no more smiles and cooing either.

She still talks to the boy, of course. Though it is easy to see that as the boy grows older, he never quite cares enough about her to love her back. Perhaps he is smart enough to know that she disposed of his father, she suspects he hides his brains like she does.

(Or perhaps he just remembers the feeling of a pillow pressed over his mouth, and choking on air that almost wasn't there.)

* * *

They are a broken pair. Cato has a grandfather and his sword, while Maceria has a ghost and her wine.

* * *

 **End of Chapter 2**

* * *

 _Caron: loving, kind; pure, untarnished_

 _Dejanira: Another form of Deianira, who is the fabled bride of Heracles. She unintentionally poisoned her husband to prevent him from leaving her for another_

* * *

 **Review pretty please :) Did anyone catch the hint with Bea's name? What do you think of Maceria now that you have some more backstory? Her name probably makes some more sense now ;) Poor Caron. A part of me wanted him to live after I wrote this chapter, but that would totally destroy what I have planned for Cato and Clove in the future. Speaking of, next chapter will have LOTS of Cato and Clove! What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc? Constructive criticism and feedback very much welcome!**

* * *

 **Preview of Chapter 3: how to feed obsession**

"There are plenty of ways to break little girls, Cato. Explore your options."

...

(she bred a monster, she isn't surprised)

...

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him... and wonders how much of his grandson's cruelty was born from his own relentless training of the boy, versus how much was due to his daughter's indifference. It is cruelty that is unmatched; he remembers every detail of the gory report given by ... of what the boy was capable of at just 15 years old (of what he did to the girl he now wants to own).

...

And we finally see some Cato and Clove!

* * *

 **AN: Sorry for the preview confusion, I was initially going to have chapter 2 and 3 as one chapter, but the whole Maceria and Caron storyline ran away from me ;P** ** _This chapter was essentially me delving into Cato's early years, and an opportunity to begin explaining the convoluted relationship he has with his family, especially his mother. It's essentially the backbone for a lot of his issues later on, and part of the reason his relationship with Clove is so messed up (a relationship which I promise you will learn more of in Chapter 3 ;) )_**


	3. Chapter 3: how to feed an addiction

**_Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Hunger Games and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_**

* * *

 ** _Summary: There is no Capitol, but The Hunger Games still exist. Each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some districts have extra incentives. {the one where Cato wins, and Clove is his prize} {the one where Katniss volunteers, just not for her sister}_**

* * *

 _Story so far: Cato Steinn's mother, Maceria, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Marvel) have delivered Cato's "prize" to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Cato's (and thus Maceria's) life for far longer than she'd like to admit. In the last chapter, we learned a bit more about Cato's biological father (Caron, the first non-East Victor), Cato's maternal grandfather (Tywin, a Victor himself descending from a long line of Victors), Dr. Bea Tray (Maceria's best friend, also from the East, she is the youngest District 2 citizen to be registered as a physician), and the divisions of District 2 (East = posh, traditionalist, wealthy; West = lower/middle working class; South = the "slums"; North = mountains that are mined). Specifically, we learn that Tywin has a chip on his shoulder regarding needing a male heir to further his family's long line of victors, and expects Maceria to deliver him the heir by seducing Caron. Maceria marries Caron, but unexpectedly begins to care for her husband (to the point where she considers disobeying her father when he instructed her to dispose of her Caron). Maceria considers running away with Caron and her next child, and abandoning Cato to Tywin so that her father does not hunt the trio down. But, tragedy strikes, and Caron (from Maceria's perspective) was not there for her when she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. In retribution, she ultimately follows through with her father's orders to dispose of Caron. Bea covers for her by doing the autopsy report. Maceria has complicated feelings towards Cato:_

 _-guilt of robbing him of his father and handing him to her own merciless father_

 _-blaming Cato for his father's death_

 _\- loving that Cato has all his father's feature but hating that Cato has none of his father's personality traits (honesty, kindness, etc.)_

 _-and longing for the family she once had but destroyed._

 _-etc. etc._

 _Her mechanism of dealing is a penchant for fermented drinks and treating Cato with indifference (leaving most of Cato's upbringing to her high-expectations, little-affection father)._

* * *

 **A Monster's Prize and a Victor's Mask **

* * *

**Chapter 3:**

 _how to feed an addiction_

* * *

 _Listen stranger:_

 _Always be wary,_

 _For there is danger_

 _in a single story._

* * *

 **IMPORTANT** **:**

 _^Blunt interpretation of above italicized pseudo-poem: please do not give up on the story after reading this chapter. The next chapter will clear up many things. No spoilers, but remember these first three chapters are from_ _Maceria's point of view_ _, and is thus_ _her_ _understanding of events._

* * *

Maceria doesn't flinch when the searing heat of the tea creeps over her tongue.

She is so extraordinarily, unfathomably, inconceivably… _bored._

Yesterday, she was invited (commanded) to have dinner with her father and her ten-year-old spawn at Tywin Steinn's manor. So today she sits at a familiar mahogany table that is studded with pyrite, eagerly awaiting her departure.

Cato and her father blather on and on – a _riveting_ conversation - regarding the technicalities of swordplay and spear throwing. There are some throwaway comments about the most vulnerable versus the messiest arteries to tear. And then there is some casual mention of the most effective locations on the neck to aim for when stabbing future tributes.

The discussion is so utterly dull that Maceria considers stabbing her _own_ neck with a fork.

There is a lull in the table's conversation, and silence joins the trio. In the background, the staff flit about silently, seeing to their patrons' needs. One of the workers appears by her sideand pours some liquid into Maceria's porcelain cup.

Maceria recognizes the amber liquid is, again, not the one she craves. _'Tea. How useless.'_ Despite her mental scorn, she keeps her face pleasantly placid.

Her shoulders stiffen when she feels the heavy gaze of her father. She greets his eyes with her own gaze reflexively, and regrets it. Unfortunately, she easily discerns from the slight twinge in his brow that he wishes (demands) her to engage the brat. She would rather not converse with the urchin eating across from her, but she'd rather not incite her father's anger more.

She looks at the boy, and feels a vicious, twisted pleasure that he looks nothing like a Steinn. No auburn hair nor hazel eyes. No pale and lean physique with wiry muscle. Cato is all bronzed skin, blond strands, blue eyes, and budding bulk. _'A Dejanira through and through, we took your name but not your face.'_

Maceria sees none of herself in this boy that tore out of her. No, all she sees when she gazes upon the brat is the image of the man he killed (with perhaps the faintest echo of her dead mother, who was topped with golden locks as well).

"Cato, _darling_ , how was your day?" She enquires politely as the staff pours _more fucking tea_ into her cup. She hides her irritation at the contents of her cup by staring coolly at her son. There are stronger, better things she could be consuming ( _things that make her pleasantly numb, things that make her forget_ ), but they are currently being withheld due to the interference of her hawk of a father.

' _The great Tywin Steinn. Long may he reign.'_

She considers it a bone fide miracle that her thick sarcasm does not shove her treasonous thoughts through her teeth. (' _and that my bitterness does not shove a fork in my father's neck. I can see his carotids pulsing, and wouldn't that be the most brilliant red there ever was? B right and verdant, his life dancing down his neck and varnishing the mahogany…'_ )

Cato's eyes widen in response to her question, affecting shock that she would address him. Maceria mentally rolls her eyes. The child oscillates between ignoring her, hating her, and acting starved for her attention. ' _How pathetic. Your father was never so fickle, never so desperate. He was strong in a way you can never be.'_

The boy, however, is uncharacteristically hesitant to respond to her easy question. And Tywin notices. After all, he has trained Cato from the cradle to never show something so weak as hesitation.

The boy's apparent uncertainty is mirrored in his abnormally quiet words. "There… was a new girl in the Training Centre today. In my old bracket."

"And?" Maceria encourages, swirling the contents of her cup. She is bored out of her mind. She can't have more alcohol than her single glass of wine from earlier since her father is so near. Once the desperate little Steinn heir answers her question sufficiently enough to please her father, then she can finally retreat to her house ( _and her cellar and her ghost and her not-tea beverages and her empty house and her numbness and her_ –)

"She was… kind of… okay." Cato admits, begrudgingly while staring resolutely at his plate. His brow furrows, as if his words pained him.

She immediately pauses the churning of her cup. Now Maceria is _interested._

Maceria has never heard the boy utter anything other than deluges of haughty superiority when referring to his fellow trainees and their skills. For him, 'okay' was tantamount to high praise. _'Honestly, it is the only almost-compliment by him of another human being that I have ever heard.'_

"At combat training, she beat Marvel." The words seem to flow easier from him now that he can see his words earned Maceria's attention.

( _'Pitiful and pathetic, your father was never so obviously eager to please.'_ )

"He called her a gutter rat and a Southside slut. Yelled at her to go back to her whorehouse and service her customers before they followed her up to the East and dirtied up our streets. She didn't yell back; she challenged him to a duel." Cato's eyes are glowing now, recalling the 'fierce battle', and it is with a slight awe that he announces: "She _beat_ him."

Cato continues, more animated now (and clearly oblivious to Tywin's increasingly tense posture). "She wasn't even half his size! But she flipped her legs over his neck, locked them perfectly, and flipped him onto his back. He couldn't even breathe and she wasn't going to stop."

Cato seems to admire this girl's ruthlessness, and Maceria is unsurprised _('you're a horrid creature, a leech on any happiness I could have had, the death of my dreams.'_ )

"The trainers had to come and pull her off. Then she told Marvel – loudly enough so that all of the trainees could hear - that if he ever insulted her again, she would break his neck, and no trainer would be able to save him." Cato seems to admire the homicidal intent from the Southside urchin even more, and Maceria really wishes she had something other than _fucking tea_ to handle that.

Maceria is well-practiced in politics. After all, Tywin taught young Cato how to fight battles, but Tywin taught young Maceria how to fake interest. So, she doesn't let her eyes widen even though they itch to from her disbelief. This shock does not stem from the boy's clear veneration of the girl's homicidal intent. And it is not baited from the ease with which 10-year-old Cato slurs. Instead, her disbelief is rooted in the feat that her son has just described. Marvel had been ranked second in her son's previous bracket in Level 2. When Cato was promoted to a bracket in Level 3, Marvel had been moved up the ranking to first…

The solid, serious timber of her father interupts her thoughts. "Unlike your foolish old acquaintance, I trust that you will not let this new girl steal your rank from you?" Tywin warns. Maceria knows that the so-called _acquaintance_ had been the closest thing young Cato had to a best friend (until her father told him winners didn't have friends - that anything other than allies and acquaintances was a distraction).

Cato reels back in his upholstered chair, affronted. "Of course not!" Then he stares into his plate once more, looking for all the world like he actually has something worthwhile to contemplate in his head ( _'doubtful'_ , Maceria thinks maliciously).

"It's not like she can even challenge me…" Cato hedges, moving his gaze to the far corner of the room, petulant. "…she's still in Level 2."

Maceria is quick to hold her tea up from the table. (She may not like the insipid stuff, but until she gets back to her cellar, this cup of bitterly bland steam is literally all she has to help her endure this dinner).

She lifts the cup just in time, right before Tywin slams Cato's head into the table.

Tywin's voice is glacial, hissing towards Cato's loudly enough for Maceria to hear. "Trainees who best the first ranked in their bracket on their first day don't stay in Level 2 for long. _You will not let her take your rank from you._ Am I understood?"

"Yes, Grandfather." The boy is smart enough to respond without any hesitancy, his voice as even paced as Maceria imagines any soldier's might be. When Tywin removes his hand from the child's neck, the boy is even smarter still to keep his head down. His cheek stays plastered to a half-eaten plate of steak, whipped potatoes, and steamed vegetables.

A stilted pause, as no one says a word. And then-

"Lift your head," instructs Tywin.

Cato follows Tywin's words promptly, but does not dare wipe his face. He lets the thick sauce and chunks of starch slowly detach off his cheek and clunk into the remains of his dinner.

 _'_ _Looks like the china survived.'_ Maceria observes dryly.

Her ambivalent gaze traces the delicate silver filigree, hand-painted onto the edges of the plate now freed from Cato's face.

She sees Tywin signal for his staff to clean up the mess. They scramble over each other to do so, like ants, unwilling to have her father's ire transferred onto them. When Maceria's eyes meet young, hauntingly familiar blue eyes, there is something… beseeching… in them.

( _Help me. Please... You're my mom._ )

This time, it is a loud silence.

"Well this has been a lovely dinner. I'll be returning to my manor, now. Have a pleasant evening, father, Cato."

She nods to them both, then takes the teacup - a macabre souvenir - to celebrate her departure.

 _'_ _You may have your father's eyes, but that will not sway me. It makes me sick that a beast like you can breathe when Caron does not. I wish on you my suffering, tenfold.'_

* * *

Many years later, Maceria will still have the teacup. She will look upon the memento more than once, eyes following the delicate silver swirls along its edge, and each time she gazes upon the porcelain she will contemplate.

She will remember Cato's vitality as the monstrous little boy introduced a violent little girl.

She will remember the dead look in Cato's eyes when she left the dinner table, without him.

She will also remember that dinner for the pivotal moment it was: the instant Cato stopped believing his mother cared enough to save him (when he began to suspect that maybe she didn't care at all).

* * *

Maceria soon learns the name of the violent little girl to be Clove.

* * *

Three years after the infamous dinner, Maceria is sitting on the porch of her manor's west wing. She would be perfectly content lounging about with her District 7 double-aged wine, but for one blight on her mood. Tywin is at a Council meeting, and so the terror she sired is having dinner across from her.

The meal is quiet, which Maceria is normally content with, but her curiosity outplays her desire to disengage from the boy.

"Is she pretty?" Maceria finds herself asking.

"Of course not." Cato reflexively scoffs. Unfortunately for Cato, he is betrayed by crimson flush blooming on his cheeks and the way his cobalt eyes fixate resolutely on the patio table.

Maceria almost rolls her eyes. She wonders if the foolish boy realizes how much he has just given away by not asking to confirm just who Maceria's question had been referring to.

She finds it a bit troubling that the little Southside urchin is _still_ able to occupy the thoughts of the boy. Cato Steinn, Tywin's heir, the Steinn Legacy: a boy who had previously thought of nothing bar being the youngest Games champion in history. Her father does not complain of his progress in training though, so she supposes it doesn't matter who or what occupies Cato's thoughts. No doubt, her father just assumes that Cato will eventually grow bored of the girl, and that the girl's novelty will wear off. Perhaps Cato does a better job of hiding his little obsession from Tywin? Or perhaps Tywin assumes that when they are older, Cato can just fuck the girl out his system. Maceria doesn't doubt that her father would pay the girl handsomely if she were stubborn about Cato's advances. And if the girl refused payment (which Maceria doubts, as Southside rats care more for money than dignity), well, her father could be... creative.

 _'_ _Steinns are good at being creative. Steinns are the best at getting what they want.'_ She thinks, and in that moment she relives the moment she poured poison into a cup.

She calls to the staff for another canter of wine.

( _'Poison quickly for my love, poison slowly for me. In delirium we meet.'_ )

* * *

In an attempt to sate her boredom, Maceria often takes trips to auctions in other districts. Or, at least, that is how she describes it to her overbearing father. In truth, she buys a pretty item from an auction and then she fills the rest of crate (that transports her purchased item) with bottles of varying types of luxury alcohol. The Mayor of District 2 keeps eyes on even the sales of liquor, the tyrannical menace, and has capped her district vendor's sales to her.

This time, her travels take her to District 1's Ancient Art Auction.

District 1 is, as always, _an_ _eye sore._ Too much glitter and pomp, whilst having too little alcohol content in their frilly saccharine drinks.

She wanders through the halls, pretending to seriously appraise the strokes of each canvas. In truth, she cares very little for these things, but Caron's gold sits idle, and if she cannot be with her husband then she can at least spend his gold.

She stops.

Before her is a triad. It piques her interest, which is surprising as very few things do.

The nearest auction worker notices this, sniffing the wealth emanating from her, and comes up to her side. Unprompted, the overdressed fool begins regaling her with the story of the three images in this collection.

"You've excellent taste, my lady, this is one of our most precious collections! In fact it…"

The first piece is an image of a beautiful young girl, dancing in a meadow. She has rounded eyes set on an innocent face. A wreath of flowers adorns her long locks, and it matches the blooms springing up along the greens of the meadow in the backdrop. There are detailed trees with thick branches, lined with wheat, painted along the edges of the canvas.)

"…An ancient princess, from the lost civilization known as _Greece…_ "

The second piece is split into two halves. The left half paints the same girl biting into a plump red fruit, red liquid dribbling down her chin and dripping onto a dark stone floor. The right half shows a dark figure wearing a crown, on a backdrop of gold.

"… _Hades,_ king of the underworld, who loved her the moment he saw her…."

The third piece shows the King dragging the princess into a dark void, right hand greedily ripping into her gown while the left kept control of a chariot carted by ink-black horses. The dark creatures pulled them towards a bed spun from gold. Maceria notes that the girl still looks pretty, even with the tears painted on her cheeks and the ruined wreath upon her head. _'How unrealistic.'_ Maceria thinks. _'True tears are ugly.'_

"…This is only one depiction, of course. There are others who say she bit the fruit willingly, eager to escape the overbearing presence of her domineering mother; do you see the confines of the wheat and trees? There are others who say that being a princess was insufficient; that she ambitioned to be a Queen. There are others still, who claim she had loved him all along, and–"

"How stupid," she interrupts the loquacious worker. "No girl loves her cage. At best, she will fake a smile until she finds a key." (Maceria thinks of Cato, her key. The key she'd had and how she had been too sentimental to use it when doing so could have saved Caron.)

The auction worker seems unsure of how to respond, so Maceria ends the encounter. "The story was appreciated, but unnecessary. It _is_ a lovely piece, and I will be sure to acquire it. Now, could you please direct me to the nearest winery?"

Maceria connects with her own version of this legend, a story she's heard before ( _lived_ before _)_ : a story of a momentary lapse and concession to a dark temptation. A choice that sealed a young girl's fate.

She goes back to District 2 with three crates, each painting lined with liquor.

* * *

When Cato is 16 years old, he storms into her manor, radiating rage as he screams and starts tearing apart the foyer of the east wing.

Cato, clearly livid, continues his tantrum even when she enters the area.

 **Smash.**

Maceria momentarily mourns the loss of the now fragmented vase. It had been one of the pieces she liked best in the east wing. It was a very expensive souvenir from an auction she attended two years ago in one of District 4's nouveau riche beach towns (and had been accompanied home by a bundle of especially smooth bourbon).

Another glass vase sails, then shatters as it meets the framed art lining the wall. _'Shame_ ,' she thinks as its jagged pieces gouge the canvas, ' _I liked that painting too.'_

She decides to intervene before she loses any more of her favourite items. Like the _very expensive_ District 11 carving that the human hurricane is getting closer to with each broken relic.

"And _what_ ," she speaks, channelling her father too easily, "has brought this on?"

Cato freezes, then slowly turns to face her. His eyes are widened, and Maceria deduces that the brat had been so consumed by his own rage (and destroying her lovely collection), that he had not even registered the audience to his madness.

He looks immediately to the ground, and scowls, unforthcoming with any response.

Maceria smirks and mockingly drawls. "And what has the _pretty_ little Clove done now, that she could inspire _such_ rage from _such_ a cold little boy?"

He stiffens, likely embarrassed (by her persistent and repeated mocking of a confession he hadn't meant to make three years ago) and angry (over her demeaning address of him).

He is still fixated on the marble floors, seemingly chastised and petulant and infuriated all at once. When he finally responds, he pauses first. Maceria suspects that pause means he is holding something back, and she is about to prod, but then he speaks and her mind goes blank.

"She beat me _._ "

Maceria's jaw drops, first in shock… and then in fury. " _How_?" She seethes. "How could you lose to that Southside street rat? That grubby whore has probably spent more time on her back than in training, so how–"

" _Shut up_! Don't talk about her like that!" He screams back, now meeting her gaze angrily, bristling in unfounded indignation. He takes a breath. "It was just one round. I beat her the other two times. So I still won the spar."

It is quiet between them, and then he has an apparent minute of lucidity in his blind rage "Grandfather… he… he isn't coming here tonight, is he?" Terror infuses her son's query.

Maceria is stone. "He won't hear of this from me. This area will be cleaned quietly and quickly the minute you leave."

He raises his brow, clearly suspicious and disbelieving that she would willingly protect him in any manner.

Maceria internally rolls her eyes. "I do not wish to incur my father's wrath either." And they both know she will, that for this she most certainly will. Either directly or as spillover, she will bear part of the blame for Cato's loss should Tywin learn of it. At her elaboration, Cato seems more believing. After all, he might (rightfully) doubt her desire to protect him, but he wholly trusts Maceria's desire to protect herself.

"Do ensure that you do _whatever_ needs to be done to prevent the girl from becoming a threat to your rank." Ranks were posted weekly, and there would be no hiding from Tywin should Cato's name not be at the top. Maceria follows her words with a meaningful stare that he doesn't seem to comprehend.

Cato stares blankly back at her, and she wonders if perhaps she has been overestimating his intelligence all these years. She turns to the shards on the floor, then looks up to one of the pieces that had just barely been spared by her intervention – the painting of Persephone being dragged into hell, gown torn, towards Hades' bed. She traces the border of the canvas as she speaks.

"There are plenty of ways to break pretty little girls, Cato. _Explore your options_."

She should probably feel at least a little nauseous after suggesting such a thing, but she stopped feeling things like guilt when she poisoned Caron ( _he always used to listen to her, even if he had nothing of substance to say. And he was kind to her, even if it was with his dopy lug-headed smile. And she had almost loved him, could have grown to if her monster of a son was left behind… if her monster of a son hadn't stolen her only chance at happiness_ ).

She turns away before she can see his reaction, but imagines the creature her son has become will enjoy the damnable act. Perhaps once he finishes the deed, he will slice the girl's throat as payment for her services, and spare her from living a life haunted by his shadow.

(' _Caron are you proud? He'll destroy his heart - like mother, like son_.')

She demands the nearest servant bring her a drink.

* * *

Bea comes to her, later that week, describing the gruesome rape of a 14-year old girl.

"And the moment she gains consciousness, she refuses to give the name of the assaulter, can you believe it? Well, whoever it was, sure did a number on the poor thing. Sadistic. Clearly knew how to hurt a Games trainee though – he almost crushed both her wrists!" She exclaims, before quickly adding, "I was able to mend them back to their original state, of course" (as if anything else would be an affront to her skills) "The damage was painful but not irreversible. Not permanent. Not physically permanent, at least. I imagine she'll never feel safe again after something so traumatic."

Maceria contemplates the information as she rolls the amber liquid in her crystal glass. "Are you so sure it wasn't consensual?" Maceria smirks. "Perhaps she merely started a game she wasn't ready to play?"

Bea looks at Maceria then, horrified, as if only just remembering what her best friend is capable of (' _I poisoned my heart once, you know exactly what I'm capable of… dear Bea, I'm starting to suspect just what you're capable of too_ ).

"Maceria… this was too far. He took it _way too far_. I erased his name from where he _carved it into her stomach_ before anyone could see it. But gods, what if I hadn't been the one to find her? And he is lucky the girl is too prideful to let anyone think she was, and I quote, 'weak enough' to be attacked." Bea shakes her head, baffled by the girl's stubbornness. "She refuses to tell a soul! And would you believe that, once she was lucid enough after all the pain meds I had to dose her with to sew up her lacerations and realign all of her dislocations, that she threatened _my_ life should I tell anyone?" Bea scoffs. "Ungrateful wretch. But, I guess, what else can you expect from the South?" Bea contemplates for a moment before continuing her tirade. "Maybe that's why she is so ambivalent about the whole thing. Bet she must have grown up expecting to be raped at some point." Bea rolls her eyes. "She probably expected she'd at least get some coin for it though."

Maceria shrugs, uncaring. She grows bored with discussing the antics of her son.

( _she bred a monster, she isn't surprised_ )

She sees Caron's horrified face reflected from the bottom of her glass. It's always easier to see the details of his expression when the glass is empty.

"Would you like another drink?"

* * *

Cato starts staying at her house more often. And though she is often preoccupied with her auctions, when she takes the time to notice, she realizes Cato comes home later and later. He says he is training, and he keeps his rank at number one, so his grandfather doesn't question his hours.

Maceria sends one of her servants to spy.

( _'I'm bored,'_ she justifies to herself.)

The servant's report is… troubling.

"My lady, he was with the Southside girl, the one who they call the knife mistress. They were… engaging… in one of the Training Centre gyms."

"Define engaging." Maceria demands, suspecting exactly what type of physical altercations her son is partaking in with the gutter rat. (Clearly, the incident that Bea cleaned up hadn't been enough to sate Cato's appetite for the girl).

The servant stutters. "W-Well… it looks like he's… training her?"

Maceria frowns. Helping his competition is something that is likely to get him strangled by Tywin, and the girl flayed, so why risk it _? Why would he do that?_

Maceria doesn't realize that she has spoken her latter thoughts out loud until her spy responds with a reddening face. "I guess you can say, she pays him well, my lady. Or at least… she pays what he wants. "

Maceria waves her hands impatiently, motioning for him to continue. However, she has little doubt over exactly how the Southern gutter whore is repaying her son for his lessons.

"Two days ago… I think her payment was letting him choke her near to death while he… while he, umm..." the spy faces the ground, perturbed and appalled by what he witnessed and not inclined to relive it by saying the words aloud.

 _'_ _And just when I thought you couldn't become beastlier.'_

Maceria decides tonight is a vodka night.

 _'_ _Monster for a son, monster for a father, monsters all around me._ '

( **'Inside you too.'** Whispers the cup)

* * *

It is unsurprising when Cato wins the right to compete in the Games as the District 2 representative.

Each district has different ways to select a champion when there is more than one person interested, which there always is. In District 2, interested competitors usually train at the centres. The best centre (the one known for producing the most District 2 Victors) is, of course, the one which Tywin attended and which Tywin sent Cato to). And then, each year, District 2 hosts a 'Pre-Games' where they have those who rank the highest in the brackets of the highest levels compete against each other. However, in order to do so, they need permission from the Centre they are enrolled in.

Cato is unusually young. The nearest to him in age during the Pre-Games is eight years his senior.

Cato wins the right to be a tribute by a landslide, and Maceria knows all of District 2 anticipates that he will return a Victor. Not just any Victor, but the youngest in history.

She wonders how many of them suspect what he will demand as his District prize, which will be owed to him by the District if he returns with a crown.

(Cato's hardly subtle. His eyes follow her when she's near, and look for her when she's gone.)

* * *

This year, the games are to be held in District 13.

* * *

It is not uncommon for tributes to be injured, but they don't often die.

To Maceria's dismay, the giant from District 9 is Cato's _only_ real competition.

She hopes District 9 wins, or at the very least, does her the service of snapping Cato's neck.

* * *

.x.X.x.

* * *

Tywin sits in the Mayor's solar, greeting the newest Games Victor. He supposes he should be proud of his grandson.

"Congratulations," Tywin begins, "you bring great honor to the Steinn name, as well as our District."

Cato doesn't bother with greetings and doesn't acknowledge the compliment. Instead Tywin's heir lounges insouciantly in the chair across the Mayor's desk, and smirks. "And the District owes me a reward for it."

The boy's response is a testament to why Tywin can't bring himself to be proud – why Tywin can't bring himself to be anything more than _content_ that the Steinn legacy has secured another championship. Moreover, one that will go down in history: the youngest Victor.

 _'_ _Entitled brat.'_

"And what would you request?" Tywin asks evenly, as if he doesn't already know what Cato's answer will be.

"Clove. I want complete ownership. Her body, her decisions, her _life_ ; she's entirely mine."

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him, and recalls the _incident_ that Bea informed him of from three years ago. It was one of his smartest moves, he thought, employing and supporting the promotions of Bea when she was a child – it allowed him to monitor the actions of his daughter while his employ of Marvel allowed Tywin do the same with his heir. Tywin can't help but wonder how much of his grandson's cruelty is born from Tywin's own relentless training of the boy, versus how much is due to his daughter's callous indifference towards her son. Perhaps it was simply his breeding, Caron's Western blood sullying the Steinn name.

And Cato's cruelty truly is a cruelty that is unmatched; Tywin remembers _every sickening detail_ of the gory report given by Bea, of what the boy was capable of at just 16 years old. Of what he did to the girl he now wants to own. He doesn't doubt that Cato had given his little band of followers leave to anything that wasn't assault or permanently disfiguring in order to restrain the girl while he was away.

Tywin does not regret.

He does not regret disposing of his impotent wife (Bea had covered his tracks well). He does not regret arranging a structure collapse during an exposition and telling Bea to get rid of Maceria's daughter (girls were useless, a pain to barter off, and Tywin needed something to force Maceria to realize how she had compromised herself. Something to reawaken her desire to be rid of her Western husband.) That being said, Tywin does think the latter could have been handled better. If it had been, he could have gotten rid of Cato's obsession at its onset when the boy was ten. Unfortunately, Maceria was sloppy and emotional when she poisoned her husband. Thank goodness Bea cleaned up most of that mess, but whispers still arose regarding what really happened to the _lovable_ victor from the West.

 _'_ _Perhaps it is time to appease the sheep in the lower areas of District 2 once more.'_

"Only if you'll have her as a bride. I'll not have the populace believe I gave out one of our citizens – a favoured future Games candidate, no less - to be my grandson's bed slave." Tywin sneers, "even a gutter rat from the South."

Cato growls. "I _won._ She's mine. I can have her however I want. I can drag her onto the streets and fuck her on the steps of the main hall with everyone as witness. She's _mine._ "

Tywin does not falter. "Wed her, or I keep her away from you by wedding her to another—"

Tywin does not finish – _cannot_ finish.

Cato's hands are around his throat.

The boy is terror-inducing, with thick brute strength, raging murderous gaze, and spine-chilling icy tone. "You haven't frightened me in a long time. I'm a Victor now, your funds mean nothing to me. _You_ mean nothing to me. Give me Clove, or I'll rip off your fucking head."

* * *

 **End of Chapter 3**

* * *

 _Pretense: a false show of something; insincere or false profession._

* * *

 **Review pretty please :) Bea Tray = betray (hehehe, totally not subtle but fun to do). So I know that I promised this chapter would be full of Clato, but I SWEAR, the next chapter is literally Cato's POV of everything that Maceria has seen over the years. Hint: Maceria is really off base.**

 **What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc? Constructive criticism and feedback always welcome!**

* * *

 **Preview of Chapter 4: how to wear a mask**

 _We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. – André Berthiaume_

-FINALLY you will see Cato and Clove's POVs of growing up, and what REALLY happened

 **Review if more chapters are desired, they fuel my words.**

 **BIG HUG MASSIVE THANK YOU'S to the reviewers so far!**

PhoenixEmbersss - you'll find out next chapter! Thanks for your review :D

Guest (1) - Thank you for your review! Their interactions are in the next chapter! :)

Guest (2) - Thanks for your review! I know I'm stuck using passive way too much in this fic, so I'm glad to hear it's still coming off as read-able ;P


	4. Chapter 4: how to wear a mask (Part I)

_**Disclaimer:**_

 _Suzanne Collins owns Great Games, and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_

* * *

 _ **Summary:**_

 _"Are you afraid? Good... In real life, the monsters win."_

 _The 13 Districts of Westeros take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition. "The Great Games" is a grand tourney where each District chooses one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks(usually physically taxing, gory, etc.). The Victor wins fame and fortune, but some Districts have extra incentives..._

 _Cato Steinn wins the 72nd Games, and it looks like his prize is Clove Stark from the South._

 _(Only it's really Cato Dejanira and Clove Stark from the North, who would both sooner save each other rather than hurt each other, so how did it come to this?)_

 _Reminder: We're in a pseudo-Hunger Games verse in terms of technology. No Capitol, just 13 Districts who take turns hosting the Great Games. District 2 is where the story is currently set, and District 2 is broken into 4 areas: West, East, North, South._

* * *

 _ **Story so far:**_

 _Story so far: Cato Steinn's mother, Maceria, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Devoric and Marvel) have delivered Cato's "prize" to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Cato's (and thus Maceria's) life for far longer than she'd like to admit. In Chapter 2, we learned a bit more about Cato's biological father (Caron Dejanira, the first non-East Victor), Cato's maternal grandfather (Tywin Steinn, a Victor himself descending from a long line of Victors), Dr. Bea Tray (Maceria's best friend, also from the West, she is the youngest District 2 citizen to be registered as a physician), and the divisions of District 2 (West = posh, traditionalist, wealthy; East = lower/middle working class; South = the "slums"; North = mountains that are mined). Specifically, we learn that Tywin has a chip on his shoulder regarding needing a male heir to further his family's long line of Victors, and expects Maceria to deliver him the heir by seducing Caron. Maceria marries Caron, but unexpectedly begins to care for her husband (to the point where she considers disobeying her father when he instructs her to dispose of Caron). Maceria considers running away with Caron and her yet-to-be-born second child, and abandoning Cato to Tywin so that her father does not hunt the trio down. But, tragedy strikes, and Caron (from Maceria's perspective) was not there for her when she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. In retribution, she ultimately follows through with her father's orders to dispose of Caron. It's a bit sloppy in that she chooses a poison to cause heart failure. Bea covers for her by doing the autopsy report. Maceria has complicated feelings towards Cato (see Chapter 3 summary), which she deals with by literally ignoring Cato's mistreatment by her father and spending her time drinking and spending money at auctions (which are just excuses that enable her to buy even more alcohol to bypass Tywin's attempts to curb her alcoholism). In Chapter 3, we saw Maceria's POV of Cato's 'obsession' with Clove. Maceria thinks 16-year-old Cato raped and tortured Clove when she was just 15 years old. And then Maceria was informed by her spy that Cato coerced Clove into replaying the same (and worse) in exchange for training lessons from him. This chapter, we find out what really happened between Cato and Clove._

 _Also in Chapter 3, Cato wins the pre-Games in District 2 (which is how District 2 decides their tribute), and the Great Games in District 13. We see some of Tywin's POV when Cato goes to the Mayor office to collect the 'extra' prize owed to him by District 2 (for him becoming a Victor). Cato tells Tywin he wants his prize to be Clove. Also from Tywin's POV, we learn that Bea and some other unnamed trainees all work for Tywin to report to him on his daughter and grandson; that Tywin killed his wife (remember in Chapter 2, how Maceria was dissuaded from her suspicion of him doing so by Bea?); and that he arranged to have the exposition structure collapse & Bea induce premature labour/ poison Maceria's unborn daughter (remember the tea Bea offered Maceria after Caron left for the Exposition?)._

 _Now we find out what really happened over those years, from Cato's POV! Well, after a little blurb from Maceria in current time, of course_

* * *

 **Responses** to reviewers and **Preview of Chapter 4 Part II** at the **end** of the chapter!

 **Trigger warning:** Non-explicit non-con when you reach the red-light alleys scene. I'll mark it with an '*'

* * *

 **A Monster's Prize & A Victor's Mask**

* * *

 **Chapter 4, Part I:**

 _how to wear a mask_

* * *

 _"We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin."_

 _~ André Berthiaume_

* * *

 **Maceria, age 39**

* * *

Despite being pleasantly drunk, Maceria is _bored_.

So, as usual, she decides to seek out her own entertainment. There are no auctions to travel to (her cellar is well stocked from her latest expedition), so she opts to pay a visit to her newest house guest. Maceria opens the elaborate door to one of the West Wing guest rooms, and sees the urchin carelessly tossed onto the bed. The rodent is still very much wrapped in ropes and chains, which are now extended to the bed's bannisters. She is gagged with a filthy cloth.

Maceria carefully approaches the lavishly decorated bed, but is beyond disappointed to see that the girl has been knocked unconscious.

Maceria prods the girl with the bottle in her hand, and then with a shove, but the wretch doesn't stir.

' _Probably knocked out from the drugs Cato's motley band of idiots used on her.'_ How annoying. _'Incompetent fools, robbing me of my show. Oh well, Caron and I can make our own in the winery.'_

* * *

Maceria is drunk out of her mind when she revisits the princess that has been locked away in the tower.

This time when she opens the door, it is clear that the girl is awake, struggling to dislodge the restraints from the bedposts.

Maceria examines the squirming girl and begrudgingly admits that the girl could be pretty if her face wasn't snarled in hatred and her left cheek wasn't turning blue. Maceria's eyes hone in on the greenish-yellow splotches that borders the blue.

"Hmm." She sing-songs mockingly. "Cato won't be happy that you've been marked."

' _By someone other than him, at least.'_

The girl's scowl deepens.

Maceria smiles derisively. "Let's have a deal, yes? I've grown bored, _again_. And you seem not so boring. So how about I remove that dank strip of cloth my son's little underlings stuffed down _your_ throat, and you don't go trying to claw out _mine_. Deal?"

Clove furrows her brow in suspicion, but ultimately nods. Her eyes are clear now. _'Good.'_ Games aren't fun when the other player is sleeping.

 _'I wonder what they drugged you up with… And I wonder if my beastly son will use the same to keep you in his bed.'_

Maceria rips out the fabric, doing her best to keep her elegant hand away the urchin's teeth.

Clove starts coughing immediately, parched.

Maceria could offer water, but that's just so far away, so she pours some wine down the girl's throat instead.

Clove coughs harder. "That's _foul_." She croaks out. "How strong is that stuff?"

Maceria ignores Clove's questions in favour of her own. "I am curious, why not just give in? If Cato wants you, he'll take you. You should be happy to have caught the eyes of a Victor, and such a handsome one at that. You'll never have to work a day in your life." Maceria traces her hand against the plush silk duvet. "Just lay on your back and spread your legs, and you will want for nothing."

Clove scowls. "He wants more than a passive doll."

 _'Oh, don't worry, I remember Bea's words about the ally and the spy's words about the training. I know exactly how depraved his palate is.''_

Maceria takes a larger gulp of her wine, before smirking. "So either adapt to his tastes or become numb to them."

Clove bristles, clearly enraged, but Maceria honestly doesn't know why. She has presented the younger girl with unparalleled wisdom. Bea had been right, ' _What an ungrateful wretch.'_

"It's _disgusting_ that you can so blithely talk about his… his _tastes_. He's your _son_."

"Yes, yes, yes." Maceria swings the bottle in her hand, and nearly knocks Clove in the head with it. "Son, beast, monster. All the same, really. But I'm _bored,_ remember? So then, girl, what is your plan? Some half-arsed dreams of escape?" Maceria's gaze shifts to the large window in the room. "Or perhaps you'll gut me, use my innards as rope to propel yourself down from your tower? _Hmm_?"

Clove frowns, almost sulking. "He'll grow sick of me eventually."

A barking laugh rips out of Maceria. _'Oh, you sorry, naïve little fool.'_ She keeps laughing, and laughing. Gosh, she hasn't laughed like this since the third time she nearly suffocated baby Cato. "Oh you stupid, _stupid_ Southern wench. Cato has been _obsessed_ with you since he was _ten. Years. Old_." Maceria pokes the girl's bruised cheek with the open end of her wine bottle, and Clove flinches. "My little beast has been planning your life with him for a _long_ time."

Maceria laughs once more. " _Sick of you?_ " She scoffs. "Spare me."

Clove snarls and renews her efforts to pull herself out of the restraints. "Then I'll kill him. I won't just let him—"

"Why not?" Maceria smiles smugly. "You've let him do a lot of things to you before."

Clove freezes.

"Oh yes, I know all about how you _paid_ him for his training lessons, and about that little alley incident when you were – hmm how old were you again, just 15? You must have been _really_ desperate for that extra coaching. Well, on top of being clueless. You didn't think it odd that he never went after any other girl? He undoubtedly had other offers – girls desperate for their sons to have his eyes and his name and access to his Victor's funds. You didn't think it odd that he kept coming back to you?"

Clove shakes her head slowly, her disbelief growing. "I need to compete. I can _win._ I won't be dependent on him for the rest of my life."

In that moment, Maceria almost feels sorry for the girl.

In that moment, she is also almost impressed by Cato.

Not proud, dear Gods no, but impressed. The manipulative little bastard knew she came from nothing, knew that the private training every other trainee accessed was out of her range, and then he leveraged that knowledge over her head. _'He found a weakness and exploited it, looks like he grew into a true Steinn despite his looks.'_

Maceria sighs almost-pityingly at the girl. "And would Cato let you do that? More than one Tribute has died in those perverse games, and quite a few come back with some crippling injury or another." Maceria can feel her almost-pity twist into something more-than-cruel. "Cato wouldn't want his favourite doll to break." She uses the bottle to poke at the girl's stomach, still tied up with so many restraints. She pokes at it again, harder, just because she can. "He wouldn't want the womb that will hold his heirs damaged in any way."

Clove is quiet for a long time, not meeting Maceria's gaze and plainly lost in her thoughts, before she speaks again. "You… know about the alley?"

 _'Such a soft whisper from such a rancorous girl.'_

Maceria smiles, wider than before. A bit more maniacal too. "I'm the one who suggested it. I had thought it would… discourage you. I thought I'd give him a little power trip over you, and finally end his obsession. Had I known doing it would feed his obsession further, I probably would have just advised he kill you back when you were still a nobody… back when you would have been another faceless corpse in the filthy alleys lining the South. Another Southern corpse that nobody would have given a second thought."

 _'Now you're the 'Mistress of Knives', a little prodigy the Trainers whisper about, just like Cato."_

Perhaps Clove reads Maceria's thoughts from her hazel eyes, because the young girl starts grasping. "My Trainers would want me to compete."

 _'Oh, this is so much fun.'_

Maceria beams.

"Your trainers would rather you _breed._ After all, two little monsters like you both? Won't you produce just the beastliest little Victors for District 2. One after another, they'll strap you to his bed," she pokes at Clove's restrains. "Just like this. And then they will let him fuck you senseless; encourage him to pound you into the mattress again and again, until you've become nothing more than womb for his seed, spitting out babe after babe until you've shrivelled yourself up."

Clove pales. "I'll carve out my damn womb," she hisses.

Maceria snorts in disbelief. "You really are a pretty, _vicious_ little thing aren't you? It's no wonder he is so obsessed with you. You might just be as monstrous as him."

* * *

 **.x.X.x.**

* * *

 **Cato, age 6**

* * *

Cato's first day at the Training Centre goes so, so well. He is easily the top of his bracket and probably even his Level, besting the others by leaps and bounds in both the formative skills display and the endurance testing _. 'Grandfather will be pleased.'_ He thinks, grinning in relief. Cato will be reporting to his grandfather when he visits the older man's manor for dinner tonight. Despite his eagerness to share his success, it is not just the victories from today's sparring activities that hold the young boy's thoughts. No, it is what happened at the end of the day, after the praise of the Centre trainers ("You're a future Victor, Cato. No surprise, really, given your blood.")

When lessons were finished, many of his classmates were picked up by their fathers.

 _'Why is my father not here?'_ Cato frowns. _'Shouldn't I have a dad too?'_

Cato is escorted to his mom's manor by one of his mom's servants. He tries to chat with the staff, asking the older woman if _she_ knows where is father is. The lady stiffens. "That is not for me to comment on, Master Cato."

The servant lady does not talk much (at all) after that, despite Cato's multiple attempts to start a conversation. It's fine though, he just recounts his day to her, even if she doesn't respond with anything other than "yes, Master Cato". She seems to want to reply, and there are so many times that she almost smiles. He could swear he saw the corner of her mouth twitch when he said that his favorite part of the day was seeing his best friends Marvel and Devoric, and showing them the 'serious face' he had been practicing in the mirror all last week to look more like his Grandfather.

(Because he looks nothing like his mom, and nothing like his grandfather, and isn't that strange? Marvel has light blonde hair like his own mother and green eyes just like his father, and Devoric looks exactly like his father, right down to the pale eyes and blotchy skin. It would be nice to look like his family, to look like he belonged with them.)

 _'Maybe I look like my father too?'_

Cato doesn't know. He doesn't know his father's name, let alone what the man looks like.

By the time he and the staff walk up to his mom's manor, Cato is brimming with curiosity.

 _'Is my dad away on a trip? Devoric's father goes on loads of trips to District 1 for work. I wonder when my dad will be back?'_

The serving woman leaves him at the door, off to do her other duties. She bows when he thanks her. Cato doesn't understand why they always bow to him, but it's nice to have people closer to his height instead of always staring up at giants, so he supposes it's okay.

He toes off his shoes at the parlor of his mom's manor and one of the other servants scuttle towards him to take them away and to take his summer coat. "Is my Mom here?" he asks the man. The older man bows, points towards the kitchen, and then bows again before hurrying off.

Cato frowns, nervous now. He isn't sure which of his moms he will meet today. Sometimes he comes at a time when she hasn't drunk too much, so she just stares at him, but at least then he can be in the same room with her for a bit.

Other times (most times) are… bad. Those are the times he comes too late.

(Too late happens too often. He doesn't understand that until he is much older -when he is trying to mask memories that he never wanted, while burying his face in the soft neck of a brown-eyed girl. A resilient girl, who was also cursed with a horror of a history that she didn't deserve.)

He cautiously approaches the kitchen. His footsteps echo loudly in the empty hallways against shining - but cold - marble floors _. 'I have to fix that.'_ He thinks. _'Grandfather says Victors walk silently.'_

He turns the corner, and he thinks he hears her talking. He finally reaches the kitchen, where her back faces him. She's alone, and she's laughing.

"Did you hear a funny joke?" He asks excitedly. Jokes are funny. It would be nice to hear a joke. It would be nice to laugh with his mom.

She freezes, and slowly turns towards him. Her hazel eyes are as glassy as the half-empty bottle in her grip. When she twists to face him, he can see two more empty bottles behind her. The glass shells are rolling worryingly closer towards the counter's edge. _'I came too late, I always come too late.'_

She sneers. "The only joke in my life is _you._ "

She laughs again, harsher than before. Cato flinches, it doesn't sound nice.

 _'She's drunk. Again.'_ But Cato is curious enough about his father that he risks asking her about him anyways, even though she is wobbling and her words are slurring and she's cackling hysterically. It is hard to say his question loud enough to be heard over her sharp peals of laughter, but he says the words as clearly as he can.

"Mom… where's Dad?"

Her laughter stops abruptly. An ugly look takes over her face (which is difficult for his mom, because she is so pretty, the way he imagines the Queens of old used to look).

" _Dead_. Because of _you_."

Then his mom throws the bottle in her hand at his head.

He ducks, quite adept at dodging the byproducts of her rage. The dark glass shatters against the wall behind him, a shower of shards that bathe his back in golden liquid.

His Mom screams.

"How dare you!? How dare you ask me about him! You killed him, you beast, _you monster._ Get out! _Get out!_ Get out of my damned house!"

He never asks his mother about his father again.

* * *

 **Cato, age 8**

* * *

He sleuths through the many shelves of the Training Centre library until he comes upon a history textbook with detailed profiles of the more recent Victors. Cato learns a lot from the book.

He learns that Caron Dejanira, Victor of the 52nd Great Games, married Maceria Steinn just two years before he was born.

Cato learns that Caron Dejanira had blond hair and blue eyes, _'just like me'_ , and that he was born in the West. The only non-East Victor ever. He learns that Caron Dejanira spent his time as a Victor by volunteering as a Trainer at the Centre, helping with the Centre's Expositions, and even starting a fund to help poor trainees.

 _'Caron Dejanira.'_ Cato whispers the name again and again, with an awed smile on his face. _'Dad.'_

And then Cato learns about how an otherwise healthy Victor in the prime of his life died of ' _sudden_ _heart failure'._

He shuffles down a few aisles, to the medical section of the library. He doesn't know what heart failure is, so he tries to find a healing textbook from the Training Centre library that will help. One that will tell him all of the things that can cause heart failure. He doesn't understand any of the books he finds. There are too many big words like _ventricle_ and _pulmonary edema_ and isn't _bronchiole_ a type of vegetable? He shakes his head, frustrated at his lack of knowledge, and searches out his Aunt Bea. _'Aunt Bea is a famous doctor, she would know.'_

He walks to her condo. It's one of the fancy ones by the hospital, that starts on the first floor but her space goes all the way up to the eighth floor. He knocks on the door, swinging back and forth on his feet until it's opened by Aunt Bea's servant, Gilly. Cato tells Gilly he needs to see Aunt Bea. He is told that Dr. Tray is working late again. So, Cato perches on one of her fancy couches, and waits. She takes long enough that he ends up napping.

Aunt Bea shakes him awake at some late hour, and he finally gets to ask her. "Aunt Bea, is there a way to give someone else heart failure?"

(Because he needs to know if his mom was telling the truth, if he really killed his own Dad.)

Aunt Bea smiles warmly at him. "Of course not, sweet boy. Now get those dreary thoughts out of your mind. How about you tell me more about how you're doing with your training while I walk you back to your Mom's manor, hmm?"

Cato is small, and young, but Grandfather has trained Cato to tell if a person is lying. And he's good at it, with everyone except his mom and Grandfather. He never thought he would have to use the skill on his aunt.

 _'Aunt Bea lies.'_

(It is a sad lesson to learn, but an important one.)

He goes to one of the student doctors in the Training Centre the next day instead. They like to show off, the same way the older trainees do. So he approaches a pair of them, who are laughing in the corner of the cafeteria as they eat their lunch. He asks them the same question. They look worriedly at each other, not subtly at all, before trying to change their faces and reassure him that it isn't possible.

Cato is seething. _'Everyone lies.'_

He is out of options, and is considering other people to ask when he happens upon an opportunity by chance (or more so because he needs to get a laceration on his shoulder stitched up – ' _stupid Devoric and his stupid knife'_ ). Jon Arryn, one of the older nurses, takes care of a lot of the minor injuries, and so Cato is sent to him.

Cato knows that a lot of the other doctors and nurses don't like Nurse Jon, because he's from the West. Grandfather's words echo in Cato's ears: _'Those from the East matter. Those from the West are beneath us. And those from the South? They are dirt'_. And yet, despite what everyone thinks and despite his grandfather's words, Cato likes Nurse Jon. The older man is kind, and when he is stitching up Cato's injuries he always asks him about things other than fighting – like Cato's favourite colour, or his favourite food. (Sometimes, it is nice to have someone who treats him like a person instead of a trainee.)

"Nurse Jon, is there a way to give someone heart failure?" Cato asks, once the man is done suturing Cato's arm.

The man gives Cato a firm look, a _knowing_ look, one that then evolves into sadness and even a bit of pity. "Yes, Cato, there is. But, you best not ask that again."

 _'Some people tell the truth.'_

"Can a kid cause it?"

For a second, Cato thinks he sees rage flicker in Nurse Jon's eyes. But the look is gone so quickly that Cato supposes he might have just imagined the ugly emotion on the kind man's face.

"No, Cato. But an angry _adult_ can."

Cato now understands something he shouldn't, and before going home, he cries in a hidden place. It is his own secret shelter, with walls composed of a thick copse of white-barked trees with red leaves. An isolated area that stands out just enough from the other colorful trees lining the banks of the Trident River.

After his conversation with Nurse Jon, Cato starts spending more nights with his grandfather. Oftentimes, instead of sleeping, Cato spends the lightless hours in an overly large room in his grandfather's house, staring blankly at the ceiling.

("You killed him, you beast, _you monster!"_ )

Cato turns into his pillow, his cheek meeting the coolness of the unused half. His eyes are wide open despite the light breaking through the curtains.

(He wonders if his mother is capable of killing him too.)

* * *

It is later, when he is memorizing the lineages of all the houses in the East, that he asks his grandfather about his dad.

"My dad was born in the West." Cato pauses. "Is that why I don't have my dad's name?"

Tywin Steinn responds easily, colder than the ice packets given out at the Centre. "You are the Steinn legacy, scion of the greatest House in all of District 2 East." Tywin's eyes tighten. "You would do well to not draw attention to the fact that the West taints your blood."

Cato repeats the same line he has heard a thousand times. "Because those from the East matter. Those from the West are beneath us. And those from the South are less than dirt."

Tywin nods approvingly. "Exactly. Now, repeat the names and current political seats held by House Bolton."

* * *

 **Cato, age 9**

* * *

Cato is lonely.

Fellow trainees drift towards him because he is strong, because of his name, and every conversation ends with either sycophantic pandering, unsubtle requests for hints and advice, and for the love of the Gods, even allusions to _marriage._

Cato distracts himself from his loneliness with training. And sometimes, even Marvel and Devoric make it a bit better. Especially Marvel, who even invites Cato over for dinner at the Dayne home occasionally.

(Of course, something feels off about Marvel and Devoric. Something is strange about the things they ask, and the things they prod him about. But, those are secrets he will uncover much later.)

Cato puts on a mask, mirrors the cold sternness of his grandfather and biting indifference of his mother.

(it's all he knows, all he's been shown, so it's easy to reflect)

* * *

Cato goes to dinner with Marvel's parents. Despite hailing from the wealthy House Dayne, Marvel's family was not as well-off as the other branches of his House. The rumour surrounding the family was that Marvel's father – Duncan Dayne – had eloped with Marvel's mother – Jenny Oldstones – who was a woman from a District 7 working class lumber family. This was done against the wishes of Marvel's grandfather, Aegon Dayne. Aegon threatened to disinherit Duncan if he did not leave his wife. Duncan refused. And so, Aegon ripped away Duncan's inheritance, and gave it to another Dayne member instead. Despite the… scandal… swirling about the family, Cato figures his grandfather permits Cato's association with this branch of Daynes because Duncan still holds one of the elected seats on the District 2 Council.

Either way, Marvel's immediate family is normal (or, at least, what Cato suspects a normal family is _supposed_ to be like). There are six siblings in total, with Marvel being the oldest and constantly overtly favoring his youngest twin sisters, Ashara and Allyria. The dinner is a disorderly and riotous, with several hands reaching every which way across the table, multiple conversations being held on top of each other, and even loud snorts of laughing with spittle of food projecting out of some of the children. The two younger boys spend the dinner exchanging mock insults, responding to each other with exaggerated outrage, and challenging each other to fights to the death with pointed forks. Their parents leave the table for a moment, to do Gods knows what, and the oldest girl – the ever prim and proper Glimmer – uses the opportunity to chastise Ashara for bringing a "dirty" doll to the dinner table. Glimmer then tries to remove the doll, much to the grievance of the other childrens' eardrums.

"Oi, Glimmer! Let up, will you? Just let Ash keep her damned doll." Marvel scowls, rubbing his ears and likely hoping no permanent damage was caused by Ashara's piercing wails.

(Allyria squeals in affront. "It's _my_ doll!" / "No, it's _mine!_ " Ashara howls.)

Glimmer gasps. "Marvel Dayne, you watch your mouth! _I'm_ going to tell mother that you swore! And no, I will not ' _let up_ ', because it is simply not appropriate to bring a _toy_ to the dinner table, _especially_ when we have a _guest._ "

Marvel sighs, faced with a brick wall of his unrelenting sister, and turns towards the easier of his siblings to manipulate. "Ashy, why don't you play hide and seek with the doll? I can send it to hide, and you can find it later?"

Ashara pauses her argument with Allyria, seeming to take the offer into consideration.

Allyria pipes up. "Can I play with _Rhaenys_?!"

Marvel frowns. "Rhaenys?"

Ashara scowls. "Her name is _Elia._ "

Glimmer rolls her eyes at Marvel. "The _doll_."

Marvel looks at Allyria's clearly finished plate, which she displays to her older brother proudly. "Sure Ally, go play with… Rhae-Eli- _the doll._ And then Ashara can join you when she finishs her dinner." He stares pointedly at the latter girl's half eaten supper. Allyria squeals in delight, grabs the doll from Ashara's begrudgingly loosened grip, and scampers out of the kitchen in the time it takes Cato to blink.

Ashara seems discontent, still. Unsurprising, really, given that the girl hadn't agreed to the dismissal of her doll and twin. She looks at Marvel, with all the seriousness in the world, and continues to barter. "You sent away my doll. So I want a hug."

Marvel looks confused at her request.

"Hugs make _everything_ better." She says, with all the inherent wisdom of a four-year-old.

Cato feels something twist in his gut.

 _'What's a hug feel like?'_

Cato wishes he had parents. True ones, like Marvel. He wouldn't care if they were rich. He wouldn't care if meals were loud and chaotic. He wouldn't care that there were dirty dolls at the dinner table.

(Anything is better than lonely meals on a mahogany table. The few times his grandfather joins him, the meals are filled with questions on his training. The few times Cato joins his mother, she spends the time drinking, each glass causing more and more hatred to spill from her eyes whenever she looks upon him)

Cato isn't allowed to befriend staff. _"Beneath you, and distractions besides,"_ according to Grandfather.

Cato and Marvel are about to head to the River to skip some stones. Before they leave the Dayne's house ( _'home',_ he corrects himself), Marvel's mother hugs the blonde-haired boy. Marvel brushes her off jokingly. She pats his head. "Come back soon, okay? And try not to get into any trouble, please?"

Marvel smiles. "Ya, ya, Mom. You got it." She kisses his forehead before he playfully bats her away with flushed cheeks, a glance towards Cato, and an embarrassed: " _Mom._ " Jenny Dayne laughs warmly at her son's flustered state before waving them both out the doors.

Cato is struck with an envy so visceral, he cannot breathe.

* * *

 **Cato, age 10**

* * *

It is the first day back from winter holiday (well, for most… 'holidays' for Cato just meant extra training under Tywin Steinn).

Cato strides into the Training Centre flanked Marvel and Devoric. The other two boys are still in Level 2, but hold the second and first ranking, respectively. Respectable positions, especially for their ages (both being about two years older than Cato). Cato is somewhat-newly in Level 3, but has already made the top ranking, largely due to his utter thrashing of Level 3's first ranked last week.

There are two others who tag along behind the trio, Joffrey and Lancel Waters. The two brothers snivel, whine, and are just too freaking incompetent for Cato's liking. Unfortunately, he is forced to tolerate their presence because their father was the Deputy Mayor to Cato's Grandfather. _'By the Gods, six years in, and they are still mid-ranked in Level 1. Useless. Absolutely useless.'_

All the Levels gather in the Centre's main hall for daily morning assembly. Other than the weekly sparring matches, where any trainee could challenge another and where Trainers set up specific matches, the morning assembly is the only time other than meals where trainees in different levels interacted. _'Well, other than specialty classes, sometimes.'_

Usually, Cato filters out all the irrelevant information being announced, which tends to be most of it. Sometimes, the Trainer of the day truly does just drone on and on and on. Even worse, today the Trainer named Euron was _gracing_ the stage with his presence. Just looking at Euron gives Cato the creeps. _'By the Gods, that Trainer is slimy. And way too in love with the sound of his own damned voice—'_

"…pleased to welcome a new addition to our Training Centre…"

Cato's attention snaps back to Euron. New trainees rarely join, so he is curious, and he can tell his companions are as well.

"…Clove Stark. She'll be joining Level 2…"

 _'Even more interesting. I would think they would start her at Level 1.'_ She must have some degree of skill, which is even more surprising given her appearance. She's… small. Both in height and in mass, with delicate looking arms. Cato almost snorts. _'She looks like she can be toppled by a strong breeze.'_

* * *

Devoric is chatting with (to) Cato after assembly, Marvel and the inept duo having trailed off somewhere else.

Devoric sneers. "I hear she's from the _South_." He says the word 'South' the way most people say the word 'maggot.' "How dare she strut up here, like she has any right to breathe the same fucking air as us."

Cato nods to show he is still listening, but in truth he is a mile away in his head, wondering if he should focus on swordsmanship or spear-throwing today. _'Perhaps neither, and foraging instead? May as well since no one left in Level 3 provides any real challenge. If they would just hurry up and promote me to Level 4, I wouldn't have to wait for the end of the week to face trainees that actually pose some degree of difficulty.'_

(Later on, Cato will reflect and suspect Devoric probably did what he did next out of some misguided attempt to regain Cato's attention.)

The new girl walks by them, Euron having just guided her towards the platform between where the Level 3 and the Level 2 trainees train.

"Hey, _Gutter Rat_!" Devoric calls out, loud enough for those in the immediate vicinity, including the new girl as well as a few Trainers and trainees, to hear.

She freezes. Her back is to them, so Cato can't make out the rest of her reaction.

"Ya, you. Southslide _slut_." He continues to jeer, and some of the nearby Trainees snort (even Euron smirks) at Devoric's… _wit_. Empowered by the growing crowd's acceptance, Devoric gives the girl an exaggerated look, from head to toe. "Little thing like you won't last too long with us. But, I bet your type can get some sick type's rockers off down in that whorehouse you were found in. Why not tramp on back over there, before your customers sludge up our streets, looking for their favourite pretty Stark cun—'

She turns abruptly, eyes blazing. Despite the burning rage in her eyes, the girl's words are ice. "Spar. You, me. _Now_."

Devoric… Devoric _laughs._ He laughs so hard, he starts heaving. "Oh, fuck, am I going to enjoy putting a little bitch like you in her place." He smirks. "I'm going to teach you not to talk back to your betters, rat."

Euron points them towards one of the sparring matts. Of course, the duo have gathered a larger crowd now.

* * *

The match is over so quickly, most of the audience is left in shock.

Cato is left in awe.

 _'She beat Devoric. First ranking. On her first day.'_

Her legs are still wrapped around his neck, Devoric's pallor growing and he gasps for air the girls tightening grip won't allow. She calls out that if he (or anyone, based on how loudly she is giving her warning) dares to insult her again, "I'll break your neck, and no Trainer or Training rules are going to save you."

Because that's what they're doing, Euron approaching and coaxing her to release her strangling hold on Roose Bolton's son.

She does, and leaves Devoric heaving (not from laughter, not this time).

She turns, and meets Cato's gaze directly for the first time. Their eyes collide, dark brown locking onto cobalt blue. It feels like a challenge.

' _Shall I depose you next?_ ' She seems to be threatening.

Cato's fists tighten, and his stomach lurches in anticipation. It's been _so long_ since he's had a worthy opponent _._ He has been indomitable ice for _years_ , and here she comes, all fierce fire and searing skill, scorching her way through his expectations. He wonders what it would be like to fight her – even wonders what it would be like to just to be near her – to be so close to such a destructive blaze.

She raises a dark brow.

He smirks in response.

 _'Game on, Clove Stark.'_

* * *

Grandfather gets him a dog, of all things, for his 11th birthday.

It's so unexpected, so bewildering, and such an _amazing_ gift, that Cato is rendered completely speechless.

"Well? What will you name it?" Tywin demands.

It's not that large of a dog. Medium-sized, coming up to his knee when it stands on all fours. It's energetic, and covered in a dark brown, almost black, coat _. 'Almost the same shade of brown as—'_ He mentally shakes the image of Clove Stark out his head.

(only not really, not really at all.)

"Blaze." Cato smirks, as he pets the creature's head. "His name is Blaze."

* * *

In one of her daily drunken stupors, Maceria warns Cato that he will regret Blaze.

"Stupid boy, you'll regret that gift when it opens."

Cato ignores her. She's not even making sense, because Cato already opened the gift box that Blaze was in on his birthday.

'You're just jealous because I have someone who cares about me now, unlike you.' He thinks viciously. Or then again, maybe he says it. Because his cheek is burning. Did she just slap him? Whatever. Not like it matters, she won't remember his words tomorrow morning anyways.

Blaze's hackles rise, and he growls at Maceria for the attack.

Cato grins and scratches behind Blaze's ears affectionately. "Good boy. You get a treat when we get to Grandfather's house."

* * *

He watchers Clove finish her spar against Marvel, winning embarrassingly easily.

Marvel is a better loser than Devoric _('not difficult, a troll would be a more gracious loser than Devoric Bolton'_ ), and congratulates her on a "spar well fought."

Marvel's words aren't bitter at all. But that is because it's Marvel's _eyes_ that give away the rage at losing to a girl, a younger girl, a younger girl from the _South_.

Cato saw it all happen from his perch on the platform, where he was taking a water break after winning his own spar against one of the mid-ranked Level 4 trainees. Clove and Marvel were the last spar of the day, so the trainees are now free to go for the evening.

Cato lets them filter out before he approaches her.

He wants to tell her that she did well. Instead he hears himself say, "you take too long to draw your knives."

Clove makes him wait until she is finished downing her own water before she deigns to respond. "And you," she smirks haughtily, "rely too much on strength over speed. You're _slow_."

 _'What nerve!'_ He glowers, before turning and strutting towards the exit. _'I am_ not _slow!_ '

(He isn't. Not now. But he will be when it matters most, sometime in the future, and _'too slow, too slow, too slow; if only I had realized sooner, I could have saved her,'_ will be his new lullaby because of it).

* * *

They spar the next week. He wins.

But not easily.

"I guess I wasn't as slow as you thought. But, you still take too long to draw." He tells her, offering her a hand. "You were almost a challenge."

She swats the proffered assistance away, furious. "Fuck off." She snarls at him, wiping the blood from her split lip before pulling herself off of the ground.

 _'Red is a nice colour on her,'_ he thinks.

* * *

They spar again. At least once every two weeks. She's still in Level 2 (thought Cato isn't sure why) and he's in Level 3, so their only real opportunities to do so are the end of the week spars.

He starts to look forward to them, and he suspects that, just maybe, she does too.

They snark at each other outside of sparring, giving backhanded compliments while trading haughty advice and outraged indignation.

* * *

 **Cato, age 12**

* * *

Blaze is Cato's truest friend. His only friend, really.

It is nice, having someone who is genuinely happy to spend time with him. (Blaze and him will spend hours in the evening chasing each other around the Trident after they finish his finishes laps together.)

It is nice, having someone who cares when he comes home. (Blaze excitedly bounds up to Cato every time he enters the foyer, jumping up eagerly and playfully barking a hello.)

It is nice, having someone talk to. (Blaze sits with him at meals, and sleeps at the foot of his bed. Blaze is Cato's constant companion.)

It is nice until it isn't nice. (Nice turns into a nightmare he will never forget.)

"No!" Twelve-year-old Cato sobs. _"Please_!" He begs and pleads. "No! I won't! I won't do it!" But he does. Because Tywin Steinn does not accept no. Tywin Steinn does not accept weakness. And Tywin Steinn does not believe in mercy.

* * *

Once again, Cato finds the secret shelter encased by large white-barked trees and roofed by their shiny red leaves. The roof is a bit patchy this time, since the leaves have begun to fall. (It may be a bit battered, but the hideaway still stands.)

For the second time, Cato cries while huddled in his hidden place near the banks of the Trident River. His arms encircle his knees and his hand grips Blaze's collar.

He is alone. Truly alone in every way now.

"Why are you crying?"

Cato rips his face out of his arms when he hears her voice.

There is no room for denial, his cheeks are stained with tears and his eyes feel puffier than they've ever been, and he's pretty sure there's dry and wet snot on his shirt.

A part of him wants to scream at her to go away.

But the larger part, the part that craves for _someone_ to care about him, tells her. "My dog… my dog died."

For a minute, her eyes soften. But then she lifts a disbelieving brow and scoffs. "That's hardly a reason to—" She cuts herself off abruptly.

She looks at him, truly looks at him, and maybe she sees that there is more to the story. She approaches him slowly, and then reaches out a hand. He doesn't understand what she is doing, and his confusion paralyzes him.

For a second he thinks her hand is coming towards his neck, but before he can shove the outstretched limb away, it instead stops on his shoulder.

She stiffly pats it. "There, there." She says. It sounds so strained and forced and awkward that Cato laughs. Even though he thought he would never be capable of laughter again. Because at least she tried, at least she truly looked.

They stay there, silent. Well, she stays silent, standing vigil over him as he crouches and continues to cry at the base of the white-barked tree. When he feels as though he has run out of tears, he wipes his face and stands. If he is shaky in his ascent, she makes no comment on it. He starts looking about the ground, trying to find a fallen leaf that isn't cracked. He almost gets frustrated, before he turns to see Clove offering him a large, unbroken, carmine leaf.

 _'It's just what I need.'_

He walks down the river, and lets the collar float away on it.

He turns, and she is still behind him, giving him the strangest look. His cheeks burn, he is _so_ embarrassed that she saw him so… so… _so_ …

"You should wash your face in the Trident. It's reaching dusk now. So if you cool your face with the river water, and then use the stones under the puffy parts of your eye, the dimming lights should be enough to get home so that no-one who runs into you will suspect… anything."

He nods.

She turns to leave.

"Thanks." He pushes the word out quickly and quietly, before he loses the nerve to speak.

She doesn't respond, just continues to walk away.

When she leaves his sight, his hand slowly comes up to cover his shoulder – the place where she had touched him with her palm. It buzzes strangely, and he isn't sure if he wants to rub off the feeling or rub it deeper into his skin.

(Years later, she will tell him that she realized the collar was soaked in blood. She will tell him that she once had her own dog – a _wolf_ – that met a tragic end too.)

* * *

 _'Victors need to be capable of killing without hesitation. No matter the person. You let sentiment cloud your mind, and this will be all the more painful because of it. I told you to never get attached, and you failed to head my lesson. This is consequence.'_

* * *

 **Cato, age 13**

* * *

An Annual Exposition is today.

Each trainee has to go through three spars (against a trainee below, at, and above their level) as well as participate in four specialist competitions.

Cato beat every one of his competitors in his combat spars, even the one against a mid-ranked _Level 5_ despite Cato still being a mid-ranked _Level 4._ Moreover, Cato won three of the four specialist competitions that he participated in (swordsmanship, the obstacle course, and spear-throwing).

Of course he lost knife throwing.

(Clove won that one. And the foraging, stealth, and archery competitions).

She may have won all her specialist competitions, but she lost one of her spars. Level 2 against a Level 4. Her against him.

So in the end, he wins the Exposition, which will hopefully sate Tywin, who was no doubt watching Cato's every performance with pinpoint precision from the central spectator box.

Everyone has left, but Cato is – unsurprisingly – still there. He is waiting for Tywin to finish accepting praise on his behalf, while the man networks and discusses whatever it is that Mayors are supposed to discuss with the other important spectators that showed up.

Cato's gaze flits about, and he notices that Clove left her wrist tape on the bench just before he is approached by Tywin. The Mayor has just finished with his last fan/colleague/voter/sponsor/whomever.

Most people would leave her wrist tape be, because most trainees don't bother collecting the materials that they are given by the Training Center. They just leave the items where they are, and the Centre custodians take care of it. However, Cato has noticed that Clove never leaves the items she is given, that she always pockets any of the items that the Centre gives away for free—

"You lost."

Tywin's baritone is an unpleasant way to be pulled from his thoughts on Clove.

"Just one station, Grandfather. I won the others."

Tywin frowns.

"You _lost._ "

Cato's fists clench as he frowns at the floor.

Tywin firmly grips Cato's chin and forces his gaze back to meet to the older man's furious stare.

"Tell me. _Tell me_ how you _lost._ " He growls out, the grip on Cato's chin tightening uncomfortably with every word.

"Because I'm more accurate with my knife-throwing than he is. Pretty self-explanatory, Mayor Steinn."

 _'Clove.'_ He recognizes her voice, even without looking behind his shoulder to confirm who has interrupted Tywin's burgeoning rant.

Tywin slowly releases Cato's chin, and smiles coldly at the girl, who had somehow unknowingly come up behind Cato. ( _'I can see why she won stealth,'_ he thinks fondly.)

"Congratulations on your winnings, Miss. Stark."

Clove smiles back. "Thank you, Mayor Steinn. But I think we both know that the person who deserves the praise is the one in front of you. After all, he did win the entire Exposition."

Cato doesn't meet her gaze, but he doubts she is searching for his at the moment either. A fact that is confirmed when she walks towards her wrist tape.

"Have a lovely evening Mr. Mayor." She says impishly, as she tosses the roll of tape in her hand and strolls towards the exit.

 _'Clove.'_

Clove is the first person to _ever_ stand up for him against Tywin. Even his own mother abandoned him to the Mayor, repeatedly.

Cato doesn't see the small quirk of his lips. Or the softening of his eyes. Or the way he nervously scratches the back of his neck and gazes a wistfully at where her wrist tape was.

Unfortunately, Tywin does.

* * *

Clove is strong, fast, skilled.

She has big, rounded brown eyes and a smattering of freckles over her nose and a couple on her forearms too. She has pale skin covering a lean frame, but it seems to be tanned from time spent outdoors.

She looks almost like the ceramic doll that Marvel's sisters own. Only Clove is steel, not something so delicate as ceramic.

She has a pouty mouth and a sharp tongue. She has warm dark brown locks that look soft even if she always keeps them out of her face in a harsh pony tail.

Clove can be snarky, and smart, and funny.

The elastic snaps when he tosses her onto the mat during one of their spars, and her hair is let loose. Cato's cheeks burn, and he is momentarily distracted.

 _'Clove is pretty.'_

* * *

 **Cato, age 16**

* * *

Clove is attractive, and Cato is not the only one who has noticed.

Cato is passively doing some biceps curls at the weight training area for Level 5 trainees when he hears them. An older student in Level 3 talking about her to his friend. He hears the little shit talk about how the Training Centre uniform looks on her, hears him describe what he wants to do to her – what he wants to _make_ her do to him - in disgusting detail.

The next thing Cato knows, his arm is pressed across the bastard's neck, shoving the redhead against the wall, as the slimy git gasps for air.

"The next time you insult her, I'm going to rip out your tongue." He warns in Tywin's voice.

* * *

She stalks up to him later, frazzled.

"I can fight my own battles."

And then the crazy girl _shoves_ him into the lockers.

He is dumbstruck. She is perhaps the recipient of the only protective act he has ever done, and she throws his kindness back in his face. She doesn't make any sense, ever, at all.

(She will tell him what the real issue is in the future. She will tell him that half of her appeal to them was that he claimed her as _his._ They couldn't beat him in a spar, and couldn't beat him to a crown, so they went after her, seeking to beat him in other ways.)

* * *

It is the weekly sparring session again. And of course, she challenges him.

They spar.

He wins. Again. Again. And again.

All three of three rounds.

The last round ends with her on her back. He keeps her felled with his body overlying hers, and his hands forcing her arms down.

She snarls, clearly frustrated that she has yet to beat him.

His gaze follows her expression, landing on the soft pink shade of her chapped lips.

He wonders what it would be like to kiss her.

He suspects she'd taste like salvation... whatever that means _._

(But actually, their first kiss will taste like a lie. And their second kiss will taste like guilt.)

* * *

She wins.

Not the spar, but she wins a round, and that is a feat no trainee their age but her can claim.

She had come at him from behind, and when he had felt her breath on his neck, when he felt her lips behind his ear, he had hesitated and she had taken the opening.

(He wonders if she realizes how she won. He hopes not. That last thing he needs is to worry about her… _seducing_ him in between dodging her sharp blades)

He can't forget the echo of her breath against his neck.

* * *

They have a second spar with each other, unofficial, in the forest. No spectators.

She wins one round again, and there is no breath on his neck that he can blame it on. She is just that skilled now.

He is proud. Stupidly so, but he doesn't know why.

* * *

He follows her home after Training ends on the day that he loses to her. It isn't for any nefarious purpose, he is just, well he is curious. He knows _nothing_ about her. And he wants to know. He wants to know who she is outside of the Training Centre.

(He learns. He learns a lot)

He follows behind her, struggling to stay hidden from her range of awareness. And as he stalks her along the streets, she talks him further and further away from the Training Centre. Along the way, he sees her deft hands pickpocketing, and he is amazed. Because he wouldn't have been able to tell if he wasn't so focused on her, and even then he has a hard time discering exactly what movements her hands are making.

She moves in a circle through the streets, eventually ending up along the forest that lines the Trident. It's a different part than where Cato's hideout is. Instead, she stops in a section of the forest that borders the East and the South. It's a park area that is frequently patrolled by officers who prevent loitering (and occasionally exercise their justice over straying Southerners).

Cato sees what looks like a bundled sleeping bag – one of the kinds they used to practice survival training with at the Training Centre – and a Centre backpack at the top of one of the trees.

She sighs. "Why are you following me, Cato?"

Of course she realized he was following her. He figured that out and gave up trying to be subtle about it a few blocks away from the Training Centre. He steps forward until he is standing in front of her. He nudges his shoulder at the tree and frowns. "Is this where you sleep?"

She shrugs. "I find places. It's really none of your concern."

The offer leaves Cato's lips before his mind processes it. "Stay with me. We have plenty of empty roo—"

She snorts. "I don't need your pity. I have done more than well enough without you and—"

"It's _not_ pity" Cato cuts her off in return.

She smiles mockingly. "Then what do you want in exchange. No one does anything without wanting something in return."

His gaze is drawn to the curve of her mouth when she smiles. He doesn't realize, but he stares at her lips for too long.

When Clove notices, she immediately shoves him away from her. Her eyes wide in disbelief and fury and … fear?

"Get away from me!" she shouts.

He realizes then, what she thinks he wanted.

"No, that's not what I… I didn't mean… I wouldn't make you… I didn't mean _that!_ " He fumbles with his words horribly.

"Yes, you did." She snorts and turns away from him. "I should have known. You're _disgusting_ and you're just like every other entitled 2 East bastard–"

Cato's mind freezes at her implication, and his stumbling is over. He reaches forward and firmly grabs her arm, forcibly spins her back to face him.

"Like who?" He growls out.

Clove doesn't respond. She stays silent, likely having realized she said too much.

His grip tightens.

" _Tell me_ Clove."

Something in Cato's gut tightens in an awful, horrible way. He remembers the words from the Level 3 trainee, remembers what the son of a bitch said he would do to her. Cato wonders now if anyone ever acted on the words.

"You think that piece of shit from Level 3 was the only one?" She looks at the ground, refusing to meet his gaze. "How many times do you think I've shoved a Trainer's hand off my thigh? Or had to avoid older trainees' painfully unsubtle attempts to get me in a locked room?" She sneers. "Why do you think I'm still in Level 3, Cato? I've been performing on par with you for years."

She finally rips her gaze from the ground, and when she looks at him, it is with such a profound fury that it almost looks like hatred. "People from the East don't like it when people from the South, or even West, do well at anything. Don't tell me you didn't notice. Why do you think Jon Arryn is still a nurse and has been refused entrance into the medical Academy multiple times, even though he is the smartest of them all? Why do you think no one cared when your _daddy popped dead_? Why do you think the Training Centre Head told me to 'make use of the opportunities given' when I told him that Euron tried to shove his tongue down my throat. Why do you think that same Head told me I was being 'overly sensitive' when I stopped Euron by shoving the knife from my boot into his arm?"

Her eyes are searing in their hatred – and it is hatred, he recognizes it plainly now.

"You fucking elitist East side snobs, thinking yourselves entitled to everything and everyone. You may as well put up a literal wall to bar us off, you've made enough figurative ones."

She stops herself, breathing deeply, trying to catch her breath after her rant.

Cato wants to… console her. But he isn't sure how. He doubts this is the kind of injustice that will be ameliorated with a pat on the shoulder.

She continues. "You probably think you've worked hard for your rank. And you're good, you know. You really are. But, don't kid yourself into thinking that you're some self-made Victor. When that crown is put on your head, it'll be because you had access to _every_ means needed to put it there. You never had anyone tell you it wasn't yours to wear."

* * *

She refused to come back with him, and perhaps that is a good thing, because the moment he enters his mother's house his anger at Clove's situation manifests as a _rampage_. He throws vases and relics and rips into his mother's fancy paintings.

For every hardship he thought he had, he realizes she has had it worse.

(She is an orphan, he knows it in his gut now, and he doesn't even know what happened to her parents. But he bets it was terrible, he knows this because she has never mentioned them. Not once.)

The idea that fucking Euron, that other trainers and trainees had… had propositioned her, had _dared_ to _touch_ her, with no repercussions…

Cato's blood is _boiling._

Not just at the circumstance, not just at the Head and Euron and all those other shits, but at himself too.

His mother interrupts his rampage.

And then… and then she…

Maceria Steinn is truly a monster, he can't believe what he has just heard her suggest.

(he feels guiltier and angrier when he wonders If he is much better than his mother, recalling how, for a second – just for the briefest of seconds – he had considered taking a kiss from Clove as payment)

His mother is (relatively) sober when she suggests the idea of _assaulting_ Clove as some sort of vengeance for her defeating him. Her sobriety only makes the suggestion more horrifying.

 _'I'm not like you.'_ Cato tells himself. _'I'm not a monster. I'd never hurt her, ever. Especially not like that.'_

* * *

He offers to train her. His offer saying the words he cannot. _'Let me save you.'_

She declines. The fierce look in her eyes responding, _'I can save myself, just fine.'_

* * *

Later that week, she loses too quickly to him.

Cato can easily infer that something is wrong with her.

So once again, he finds himself following her after training.

Last time, she had clued into his tailing her quite early on. This time, whatever holds her thoughts must be all consuming, because she doesn't appear to notice him at all.

They walk away from the Training Centre, through East, through the separating forest line, and through the South to the very end. Then he sees her enter an area that sends off all his internal warning bells.

"What are you doing in the Red-Light Alleys, Clove?"

The crowd grows, the light of dusk fades.

He loses her in the crowd.

His heart clenches. He frantically searches through the throngs of drunkards and whores and sleazy clients and shady figures.

 _'No. No. No. Clove, Clove where are you?'_

* * *

 ***trigger**

* * *

He finds her.

In an alley.

Under a man who has his hands on her throat while thrusting his hips inside of her, her clothing ripped from her body.

Cato sees red. An all-consuming almost-black red.

In hindsight, he would have pulled the attacker off of her, and given the bastard a slow and painful death. Flaying. Gelding. Ripping off his fucking nails one by one for daring to break Clove.

But Tywin's training takes over, and his red rage is honed efficiency, so all he does is snap the bastard's neck.

( _'Snap, crack, dead, done.'_ )

He looks over to Clove who is staring wide-eyed at the corpse he has just shoved off of her nearly-naked body.

She's still, stuck in a stupor.

His fury doesn't abate. "Clove! Clove? _Clove?!"_ He shakes her shoulders roughly. "Clove, look at me. _Look at me._ Why didn't you defend yourself? Why didn't you stop him? You fucking idiot. Why the hell did you come to this fucking area—."

"No." she shakes her head, dazed, still starring dazedly at the man's cooling body. "No, no, _no_." The shaking gets worse, her entire body is thrashing now. "No, you _ruined_ it!" She screams at him, and then she starts sobbing. He has never seen her cry before.

He's seen her staunching blood flow from a broken nose while getting her dislocated shoulder reset, without a shedding a single tear. And now – his eyes see her hands. _'What the fuck did that son of a bitch do to her wrists?!'_

There is gross bruising and bones in odd angles along her entire right and left hands.

But here she is, screaming.

He tries to calm her down, and is largely unsuccessful. She becomes hysterical, hitting him, trying to claw at his face by only reaching his neck. Which is so stupid of her, because be he knows doing so must be further damaging her wrists. _'You stupid, stupid girl.'_ He holds her arms steady by her elbows, and tries his best to calm her down. "Tell me." He tells her. "Tell me why you let him do that to you."

Because he knows that she _let_ him. Because she is the strongest trainee apart from him, who always carries at least two knives on her at a time, and that man was just a man.

"My sister." Clove sobs. "He has my sister, and you just ruined the only way I had to get her back!"

* * *

He takes stock of her other injuries. The ones he can see, at least. It's bad, _especially_ her wrists. Her hands… they might not be unusable after this. She needs a good physician, _now_ , and the Training Centre won't be available until tomorrow. He doesn't know where Jon Arryn lives, and he is the only man Cato knows who might have considered helping her without questions.

Clove refuses to be taken to the District 2 Hospital.

"No one can know, please Cato. No one can ever know."

There is one option.

 _'She's the competition,'_ hisses a voice in his head that sounds too much like Tywin. _'Let her hands be crushed, there are other ways you can enjoy her company.'_

He shoves the voice into the deepest corner of his mind, shuts the lock, and chains it up twice. He doesn't ever want to hear that voice again. Besides, Cato justifies to himself that he is helping her because he hasn't beaten her yet since his defeat, and it won't feel like a true victory anymore if her wrists are spoiled, and she was the only decent training partner he had. He repeats this to himself, even though knows it isn't true; he knows he is helping her because he cares about her and because _she doesn't deserve this_.

He covers her bruised and bloody exposed form with his jacket, and then gently lifts her into his arms before making his way through the streets. He tries to stay in the shadows, but honestly, no one seems to bat an eye at the fact that he is carrying a girl that could be unconscious. She has long since stopped struggling, but he wonders if anyone would have bothered to help her even if she did.

Instead of struggling against him, she whispers a horrible story.

"We needed money. We had no place to live, and it was the rainy season. We were cold. We were starving. And it was just the both of us after… after ..." she tapers off.

"And I tried to steal, but there were so many times that I got caught before I got good, and each time I would get beaten and Senna, Senna couldn't take me coming back bloody anymore."

(he doesn't think to ask why two little girls were abandoned. Not tonight. That is not a story he hears until much later).

"So she went to fucking Baelish. And she… she started to work in the brothel. And I slept there at night, in one of the closets, and ate their food. At first, Senna came to me at least once every night. But then she came back less and less. And when she did come, I couldn't recognize her, not anymore. So I spent my time while she was… working… I spent that time practicing. And the next term, I got accepted into the Training Center. Into the scholarship spot that your dad's fund set up. So I strode up to that damn brothel after they told me I was accepted, and tried to tell her we could leave. Because I could take care of us now. But Baelish…" She scowls. "He didn't even let me see her. He told me that I had to _buy_ her. Senna had started using those stupid drugs, the ones that they give to make the brothel girls forget, and he said he would charge her for them if she left him."

"So I saved up every penny I could from my fund's allowance. Sold any of the free extra supplies we got. Stole my food instead of buying it. I needed to buy Senna her freedom back. And I went to him three days ago, told him how much money I had, and he told me it wasn't enough." She pauses. "But that… that it could be enough, if I gave him something else too."

* * *

He stops in the back alley behind a familiar condo. He settles her down softly so she is seated upright on the pavement.

Cato looks at her grimly. "This doctor…" Cato isn't sure how to say it, so he doesn't bother trying to filter it. "This doctor will only fix you if they think I'm the one who hurt you."

Clove's eyes go blank again, like before, and her voice goes hollow. "Would you like a turn then, Cato? Is that the cost of your kindness?"

He rips the sleeve of his shirt. And when he stuffs it into her mouth, he finally incites a reaction of her. Her eyes widen in betrayal. For a moment she tenses, then she closes her eyes and tries to lie down, no doubt expecting the worst from him.

He takes out the knife from her boot, where he knows she keeps it always.

"This will hurt. Bite on that cloth when it gets too much. Neighbors actually _do_ care about screams from alleys in the East."

He hates every minute of it, hates the look of his name in her skin.

(he relives being 11, and carving up Blaze, whose coat was the same shade as Clove's hair, and Blaze bled red, and Clove bleeds red, and he can hear her muffled screams the way he heard Blaze's whimpers.

But this is different from Blaze.

He hurt Blaze to save himself. He hurts Clove so he can save her.

So he carves his first name into her abdomen because he knows exactly what Bea will suspect when she sees a half dressed Clove enter her apartment, bloody and bruised and half-dressed in his jacket. After all: Bea lies, his mother couldn't have poisoned his father on her own, and Bea wrote the report that said _'heart failure, natural cause'_. Cato knows that Bea will do anything for his family, including cleaning up this mess if she thinks Cato is the one responsible.

Of course, Bea will tell his mother. Then his mother will think she was right about him all along.

He's carving the "R" into Clove's alabaster skin now.

(But what do his mother's thoughts matter? He stopped caring about her opinion long ago, when she dropped him off at his grandfather's doorstep because she'd rather raise a glass than raise a child. Because she left him at a dinner table after _seeing_ how Tywin treated 10-year-old Cato, and the stupid tea-cup from that decisive dinner is still proudly displayed in the glass cabinet, reminding him every visit how unwelcome he is in her manor, and sometimes he dreams of her suffocating him in a crib).

He finishes saving/butchering Clove. He instructs her to walk to the door. Gilly will answer. He tells her to show Gilly the wound.

"I'll take care of the body in the alley." He tells her. "I'll hide it in the river. I can probably drag it by—"

Clove says not to bother. He asks if it will be traced to her and she looks at him, her growing pallor worrying him even as she smirks self-deprecatingly. "Haven't you learned yet? No one cares about dead bodies in the South, Cato."

Once he sees her being shuffled quietly into the house by Gilly, he makes it just over one block before he runs behind a bush and vomits until he is retching on air.

* * *

When he looks in the mirror the next morning, he sees the evidence of her hysteria on her neck.

His mother smirks knowingly at the gauges in his neck that evening at dinner.

"And here I was, doubting your capacity for cruelty." She says mockingly.

His grip on his fork tightens.

"Then again, I bet she liked it rough. Screamed your name in ecstasy when you carved it into her."

His vision starts going red.

It is silent for a while.

(he uses the silent to cut into his steak, imaging the knife was slicing into Maceria's throat. The blood seeping out of the meat could match the liquor lining her throat.)

"Duncan sent out an invitation. Marvel's birthday is coming up soon isn't it?"

Cato is only half-listening, trying his best to keep the knife on the meat instead of her neck.

"I've heard recycling used things is good for the environment."

 _'What are you getting at, you fowl excuse for a person?'_

"A recycled gift, how novel. Perhaps Marvel would enjoy a round with your new doll?"

Cato shoves his plate off the table. The broken shards dance against the floor, moving to the music of his mother's cackling, as he storms out of the dining room.

* * *

 **.x.X.x.**

* * *

 **Maceria, age 39 (continued)**

* * *

Maceria snorts in disbelief. "You really are a pretty, _vicious_ little thing aren't you? It's no wonder he is so obsessed with you. You might just be as monstrous as him."

Maceria doesn't know what reaction she is expecting, but it isn't the knowing little smirk that twists the Southern urchin's lips.

" _Hmm_." Clove mocks. "My grand plan? Well, let's see. Perhaps I'll poison him, a poison that will cause his heart to fail."

Maceria freezes.

Clove continues.

"But not before I have his child first. Then I'll ignore the child after killing its father, leave it with an abusive beast of a grandfather, encourage my son to rape little girls, lush away the rest of my years as a maudlin monster, and—"

Maceria slaps Clove so hard, the girl must be seeing stars.

Clove spits out blood, and gives Maceria a wolfish scarlet-stained grin. "I know things too. I know you're more a monster than Cato ever was."

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **Full disclosure:** In case anyone wasn't aware, I revamped this story as a GOT fic titled "The Great Game." My primary focus when I update this set will be that fic, but I will try to keep up with this fic as well. That is why there are a lot of GOT / ASOIAF references in here, in case anyone was wondering. I tried to replace/swap as much as I could to not disrupt flow. But again, given the fact that the reception for the GOT fic has been stronger than this one, this story will likely take longer to update that the other one.

PLEASE REVIEW! What do you like? What do you not like? Any Grammar/spelling/formatting mistakes (if you see these, pretty **PLEASE** point them out to me so I can fix them! This chapter is probably especially littered with them since I kind of just wrote, skimmed, and posted instead of doing my usual editing. I might try to come back one day to fix it, especially since I bet there were some parts that were pretty heavy-handed and not subtle at all).

* * *

 **Preview Chapter 4: Part II**

* * *

She breathes over his lips. "I don't think you stopped because you hated it or it revolted you. No, I think you stopped because you were afraid you liked it a lot more than you should."

-x-

And so he finds himself running through the Red-Light Alleys again, this time hunting down a different Stark girl.

-x-

"I would rather _die_ than have to see your face. You're the sire of every terrible thing that ever happened to me. Let me at least die for myself after giving up my life for _you_."

-x-

"Do you want me to stay?" he asks quietly.

"I don't want you to leave." She admits with a small smile.

-x-

Cato remembers Marvel consoling a young Ashara, and figures it's worth a shot. "Did you… umm… need a hug?"

Clove rases a brow. "A _hug_?"

Cato flushes. "I've heard hugs make everything better. I mean, after that, but you know, after what happened the other night I understand if you don't want, I mean." He fumbles grandly, unsure of how to convey that he thinks she needs a hug -*-*-*- versus wondering if she is okay with physical contact like hugs after what happened in the alley.

"I don't want a hug Cato" He feels his stomach sink a bit, until she adds softly. "But… thanks."

-x-

"No one is better off without their mother."

"Have you met mine?"

"You really despise her that much?"

"The feeling is mutual, I assure you. In some ways, Tywin is preferable only because he still has a use for me.'

-x-

"I wasn't born in the South."...Cato's ears perk up at her quiet words. He is unbearably curious as to where this mysterious girl is truly from. She answers without him asking. ..."The North." She says, almost reverently. "I was born in the North."... Confused, because what brought her to the South of all places?... "My father... trusted someone he shouldn't have."

-x-

"Marry me."

* * *

 **Responses to Reviewers**

* * *

 **Guest** – thanks so much for your review and kind words! Hopefully this chapter was worth the wait!

 **Professor R.J Lupin1** – thanks so much for taking the time to review! Again, hopefully this chapter was worth the wait ;)


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